Garner, did Maryland Mammoth tobacco not know when to stop making leaves and start making flowers and seeds?
The tobacco, first noticed in 1906, seemed a boon to growers. It grew as tall as 15 feet and put out nearly 100 leaves until frost would kill it. But what good was this oddity? It rarely flowered in Maryland, and it never produced seed in the field that could be used to plant the next crop. Its tantalizing ability to produce leaves seemed a mirage. And why, Garner and Allard puzzled, were soybean farmers being frustrated at spreading out their harvest time? They would plant the crop 2 weeks apart, but the plants would all set flowers at the same time. The two researchers solved both mysteries with the same experiment. In retrospect, the test seems so simple it might have sprung from the naive fancy of a child except no one had tried it before. In July 1918, Allard and Garner grew some Biloxi soybeans and Maryland Mammoth in pots. Some plants they left outside all day long. But every afternoon, they placed one group in a shed without windows, returning them outdoors the next morning. Th
