You might say UC Cooperative Extension has its very own "News of the Weird." UCCE farm advisor Michelle LeStrange wrote about corn smut in a recent column for the Visalia Times-Delta. Unlike most stories about controlling what is viewed a "pest," she writes that the ugly bluish galls that may be found on home-grown corn can actually be considered a delicacy.

The condition is common corn smut.

"In Central and South America there has long been a tradition of eating corn smut (huitlacoche or cuitlacoche); farmers there receive a premium price for their infected corn. Huitlacoche is just now becoming a gourmet item in the United States, with trendy restaurants in California and New York offering it," LeStrange writes in the article.

The UC Integrated Pest Management Web site offers information on corn smut that sounds pretty creepy.

"Galls on ears and stems expand and fill with masses of powdery, dark olive brown to black spores. . . . Ear and stem galls rupture, and wind, rain, or irrigation water spread them through the garden," according to the IPM site

If you don't want to experiment with this gourmet food, IPM suggests removing and destroying the tumorlike corn smut growths as soon as noticed to keep the black powder in galls from getting into the soil.