The Three Sisters

Over a ten-thousand year period, Native Americans developed five varieties of corn which met the gustatory demands of millions of people from the seed of a plant called teosinte.  (An "ear" of teosinte was smaller than a new-born baby's smallest finger!!)  The varieties were defined by the characteristics which made them suitable for different recipes: popcorn was one variety; flint corn was ground into flour; another type, dent corn, was cooked as hominy; sweet corn was eaten roasted; waxy corn has a very complex form of starch that is slow to convert to sugar.   This provided dietary diversity and permitted corn to be grown from the highlands of South America to the coastal woodlands of New England. Now corn is a staple food of half the world's population. 

Corn was almost always accompanied by and interplanted with squash/pumpkin and beans and for this reason, as a group, they are called the Three Sisters.   The seeds of the three, all warm weather crops, were planted in hills.  As the plants matured the corn stalks provided support for the bean vines and shade for the ground-hugging pumpkin vines which in turn kept the roots of the corn plants cool and moist with their broad green leaves.   Wherever one of the Sisters is present, it is a sure bet that the other two are nearby.