Wondering - Corn, beans, etc were supposed to be native to America....?

Question

I have always wondered why we do not see wild corn and bean plants growing. If these plants were staples of the native american diet before the white settlers, why don't we see the wild versions everywhere.
I never have seen the wild versions of any of our main food crops except wild carrots which don't look much like our carrots.
So were early people genetically engineering crops for hunderds of years? Where are all these wild versions of both European and American crops? Are they extremely different from modern versions? Why? If Mendel discovered the science of genetics in the middle ages had the first native versions of crop plants already disapeared well before that???

I'm not imagine test tubes etc, it's just they must have been doing something to make the plants so different. I live in AZ and you don't see anything like wild corn around here, yet the natives grew corn.
I have seen things in the legume family similiar to beans but still very different.
Why do the wild versions and other in between versions disappear?

Answer 1

You are imagining things.... you might do well to find a book on ethnobotany. I recommend the one by C. M. Cotton.

Corn is a crop which cannot live without the aid of humans. It had to be adapted generation by generation to grow with less and less light as it moved northward over several hundred years. Originally it was adapted to a region much closer to the equator than it is found today.
The original ancestor of corn (Zea maize) is somewhat of a mystery. Teosinte is commonly believed to be one of its earliest ancestors. The genetics is rather confusing. -But teosinte can still be found... I'm just assuming that you do not live anywhere near its native habitat in southern Mexico.

Beans... you aren't looking around very much if you've never seen wild beans.

The wild ancestors of modern food crops are found where the modern crops originally originated. If they can still be found, that is... Sometimes after domestication, the wild varieties of a plant can go extinct. The Polynesian kava plant might be a good example of this (it is medicinal, but it's the same thing).

Were early people genetically engineering plants for hundreds of years? Well... yes. That's what domestication and plant breeding IS. They didn't use test tubes full of nutrient goo and gene-splicing equipment, but they did use artificial (as opposed to natural) selection to produce the plants we know today. ...There were some accidental selection going on... non shattering seed heads in grain, etc, but all the same, again.

"Modern" crop plants are determined by the age in which they are grown. My grandmother's "modern" tomatoes are the heirloom variety that no longer exists today. Seed banks have been established to slow the dissappearance of varieties in the last few decades. But they always change... so, 'yes,' again.