Back to the Hon-eel question! Alex still doesn't think that she qualifies as a Grain Goddess, describing her instead as the cultural hero who found grain, not the goddess responsible for its spread and nurture. I can see where the confusion lies. Yes, if a grain goddess must be a land goddess also, then Hon-eel is not one. If there can be grain goddesses that are not land goddesses, then she assuredly is one. I am inclined to think that the second category is a valid one. Perhaps Sandy can remember what the writers meant, since he is one. If so, would you tell us, Sandy?
Pelora is the land goddess of Peloria, granted, and maize is Peloria's main cereal. However, Hon-eel is not a land goddess, but a goddess tied to the culture of maize. As such, she can be exported wherever maize is grown, unlike Pelora, who remains tied to her country.
GoG says specifically that Hon-eel "is the special goddess of maize", and that goddesses specially associated with a grain "have their own special magic". I do thank you for the question of what this special magic might be. I had to take a course on botany, in which my prof concentrated on maize and soybeans as our two lab subjects, so I'll see what I can find.
The other question that could be debated is what kinds of corn did Hon-eel bring back, because corn is a very highly-derived grain these days. Here's what my botany text had to say. Corn used to have a little husk around each grain until about 6000 years ago, and far fewer grains per cob. Corn now comes in five very different varieties: sweet corn, popcorn, flint corn (the stuff the Pilgrims saw), dent corn and flour corn. Sweet and pop corn may be eaten as they are, and there is a suspicion that popcorn is the primitive type, because after heating there is no need to grind the stuff. Sweet maize is usually harvested wet for eating (unlike most other grains), and left on the stalk to dry for the seed crop. The last three vary in their proportion of hard to soft starch, with dent corn being all hard, and flour corn being all soft. Flour corn is the stuff used for tortillas. Unfortunately, corn makes lousy bread, due to its lack of gliadin. It also lacks calcium, niacin, lysine and tryptophan, so dietary supplements are mandatory, or you get pellagra.
If the seed is not shelled from the cob, no plants will successfully grow, because the seeds can't fall off and the multiple seedlings will choke each other. It also requires more water than most cereals, and generally a longer growing season. Early-ripening varieties tend not to bear well. Mostly, I think that it is treated much like any other cereal, though allowing fewer plants/acre due to the huge size of the individual plants.
How about magic that would reduce the time or water needed to ripen the grain, that allows the corn to be used in breadmaking, or prevents the corn from producing more than one ear (more ears reduces the yield, according to the guy whom I spoke to from Stokes Seed)? The last is rather a special form of Bless Crops, I suppose. A very special magic might make the corn so nutritious that you didn't have to eat anything else. Very specific magics are probably directed against the particular pests of corn. Repel Corn Borer, anyone? I may be a bit too practical to think of any wild ideas. Anybody else want in on this one?
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