[rottencupcakes]

Title is very misleading. Perhaps it should be “Rare corn can fix its own nitrogen”

Incredibly cool though.

[echelon]

That's arguably even cooler. It's such an essential part of plant biology.

[13of40]

I scrolled past the headline a couple times today because I thought it just meant self-pollinate.

[randomdata]

What would be rare about that, though? Even the usual corn we see on the regular can self-pollinate. It typically doesn't, accepting pollen from its neighbours instead, but it can. It is suggested that in a typical field of corn, ~3% of the plants will end up being self-pollinated.

[Salgat]

Nothing, but self-fertilization is already an established term in biology which makes it confusing.

[randomdata]

True. As a corn grower, I assumed it meant nitrogen fixation on first read and didn't even consider your usage as fertilization, per your usage, isn't something we need to think about much in corn. Fertilize much more commonly refers to application of fertilizer in my world.