Word: cornelis
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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...there were weeds in Orval's row of corn. They reached out of the field and out of the hills and around the world. They had created ugly patches on good ground, and before they stopped growing, they might well kill the very ambitions that Orval Faubus had cultivated with all his might...
...Bureau of Public Roads official, the four visiting Poles peppered Pennsylvania experts with questions on road-building materials and mechanization, marveled at superhighways, ogled multi-colored U.S. cars. Though few Pennsylvanians stopped to ogle back, the Poles were nevertheless important. Like another Polish delegation busy last week observing U.S. corn-raising techniques in Iowa, they were flesh-and-blood manifestations of a new warmth in U.S.-Polish relations...
...pretty plant, with gay red and orange flowers shaped something like violets. In South Africa, where it abounds, Boer farmers call it rooibloemetjie (little red flower) and vuurbossie (firebrand). In the U.S. it is witchweed (Striga asiatica), a parasitic plant that sucks the life sap of corn, sorghum, sugar cane and many other crops, leaving the plants as rustling ghosts while the little red flowers bloom over their roots...
...Carolina farmers complained that their corn had a mysterious disease. It looked as if it were dying of drought, but when rain fell, the corn did not recover. The disease spread, and last year sample plants were sent to North Carolina State College, where plant pathologists could find no bacterium, virus, fungus or other malefactor to account for the trouble. Then a graduate student from India took a careful look at the sick corn and recognized among its roots the underground stems of witchweed, which had never before invaded the Western Hemisphere...
...when the U.S. Department of Agriculture heard the news, it went into action, sending a task force of scientists to help the local authorities. A quick look at the literature told the scientists that Striga asiatica is one of the world's worst pests. Serious infestation can reduce corn yield to zero. Eradication is almost impossible...