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Glite Dictionary
silking

silking

8.4
The stage when corn plants grow silk threads for making seeds
  • noun
  • Specialized
translation icon : floración
  • In late summer, you can observe silking happening in corn fields, marking the development of ears.

Examples

  • For me, corn is starting to form in August and you can tell because I have all of these little ears with my silks, which are the female part right here.

  • During the silking stage, the corn plants grow long, silky threads that are crucial for pollination.

  • Farmers monitor the silking of corn closely, as it indicates the beginning of the reproductive phase.

Surface Forms

silking singular
silkings plural

Morphology

silking = silk (semi-transparent) = silk + ing

The word is formed from silk plus -ing, but the botanical sense is specialized and only partly predictable from the everyday meaning of silk.

Etymology

Silking comes from the common word silk, because corn grows long, soft 'silk-like' threads during its reproduction stage. So silking is the time when those thread-like silks appear and farmers watch it to know the best time for pollination.