Corn

Maize (corn) is a very important food for livestock as well as for man. The grain is ground into flour or cooked without grinding; small green corn (unripe cobs) forms a favorite vegetable; the dry cobs are used as fuel and the spathes are used for making paper.

This plant (maize, corn) was first domesticated in Central America about 7000 years ago and is now the third most important crop in the world. The many cultivars are grown for cereal or forage, and it is also an important source of oil, syrup, and alcohol.

Annual; culm solid. Spikelets unisexual. Staminate spikelets in pairs, about 9 mm long; lower glume lanceolate, pubescent, keeled, long-ciliate, margin thinner, 9-11-nerved, as Iong as the spikelet; upper glume oblong-lanceolate, 7- nerved, nearly as long as the lower; lower lemma minutely hairy on the back and margins, 3-nerved, about 8 mm long; palea as long as the lemma; upper lemma smaller than the lower palea, cleft usually to the base; anthers 3, about 6 mm long. Pistillate inflorescence axillary, the spikelets in many rows on a thickened, almost woody axis, enclosed by numerous large foliaceous bracts or spathes, the tyles extremely long, like silky threads. Caryopsis greatly exceeding the glumes at maturity.

Culms erect, 1–4 m tall. Leaf sheaths with transverse veinlets; leaf blades 50–90 × 3–12 cm, glabrous or with tubercle-based hairs, margins scabrid, midvein stout; ligule ca. 2 mm. Female inflorescence a cylindrical "cob," with 16–30 rows of spikelets; glumes equal, veinless, margins ciliate; florets hyaline. Male inflorescence a "tassel" of many digitate racemes; spikelets 9–14 mm, unequally pedicellate, one pedicel 1–2 mm, the other 2–4 mm; glumes subequal, membranous, lower ca. 10-veined, margins ciliate, upper 7-veined; lower lemma and palea hyaline, subequal; upper lemma smaller than lower. Anthers orange, ca. 5 mm. Fl. and fr. summer–autumn. 2n = 20, 40, 80.

America, widely cultivated in all warm countries.

A native of America but now cultivated in all warm countries throughout the world.

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Widely cultivated in China [originating in America; widely cultivated elsewhere].