Zea mays |
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corn, cultivated corn |
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Habit | Plants annual. | ||||||||||||
Culms | (0.5)1-3(6) m tall, (0.5)1-5 cm thick. |
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Blades | mostly 30-90 cm long, 2.5-12 cm wide. |
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Caryopses | concealed in fruitcases (wild taxa) or exposed (domesticated taxon); fruitcases of wild taxa distichous, triangular in side view; domesticated taxon without fruitcases, glumes reduced and shallow or collapsed and embedded in the rachis. |
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Pistillate | inflorescences rames or spikes, usually shortly pedunculate (sometimes sessile), solitary, 4-30(40) cm long, (0.5)1-10 cm thick, with 2 or more rows of paired spikelets, hence the spikelets 4 or more ranked, rarely terminating in an unbranched staminate inflorescence. |
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Staminate | panicles 10-25+ cm, with 1-60(235) branches, internodes 1.5-8.2 mm; spikelets 9-14 mm long, 2.5-5 mm wide; lower glumes rounded dorsally, flexible, translucent, papery, loosely enclosing the upper glumes, the 2 lateral veins subequal to the others, not winged. |
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2n | = 20. |
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Zea mays |
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Distribution |
AL; AR; AZ; CA; CO; CT; FL; GA; IA; ID; IL; IN; KS; KY; LA; MA; MD; ME; MI; MN; MO; MS; MT; NC; NE; NH; NJ; NM; NV; NY; OH; OR; PA; RI; SC; TN; TX; UT; VA; VT; WA; WI; WV; WY; PR; ON; QC; Virgin Islands
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Discussion | Of the five subspecies of Zea mays, only the domesticated subspecies, Z. mays subsp. mays, is widely grown outside of research programs. Three wild subspecies are treated here, albeit briefly, because of their importance as genetic resources for Z. mays subsp. mays. (Discussion copyrighted by Flora of North America; reprinted with permission.) |
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Key |
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Source | FNA vol. 25, p. 701. | ||||||||||||
Parent taxa | Poaceae > subfam. Panicoideae > tribe Andropogoneae > Zea | ||||||||||||
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Name authority | L. | ||||||||||||
Web links |
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