Zea maysL.

Maize

WFO wfo-0000907754 Accepted WFO 2026-06 7 photographs CC0 / CC BY

Plate 1 figs. a–g

Zea mays, photographed by Haneesh K M
fig. a Haneesh K M, CC0 1.0 / 2022-05-01 / obs. 195033609
Zea mays, photographed by Jared Shorma
fig. b Jared Shorma, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 158536943
Zea mays, photographed by bat (Maria Vorontsova)
fig. c bat (Maria Vorontsova), CC0 1.0 / obs. 187891272
Zea mays, photographed by Силаева Татьяна Борисовна
fig. d Силаева Татьяна Борисовна, CC0 1.0 / obs. 153725309
Zea mays, photographed by Oscar Alejandro Morales Juárez
fig. e Oscar Alejandro Morales Juárez, CC BY-SA 4.0 / obs. 159447466
Zea mays, photographed by Vladimír Fuka
fig. f Vladimír Fuka, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 146068013
Zea mays, photographed by Kaden Slone
fig. g Kaden Slone, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 99547010

Every figure is a research-grade observation under CC0, CC BY or CC BY-SA, rehosted with the photographer’s name, the licence and the observation it came from. Photographs under a NonCommercial licence are excluded from this site and are never stored, which costs us a great many pictures and is not negotiable.

Flowering n = 173 observations

Peak flowering in Aug, from 173 community-annotated observations worldwide. This is a global aggregate, not a forecast for your garden: the same species flowers on different dates in different hemispheres, and citizen-science records cluster near cities, at weekends, and in spring. Where a species has fewer than 30 annotated records we do not draw this chart at all.

Also published as 141 synonyms

A synonym is not an error. It is a record of botanists disagreeing, in print, about where this plant belongs. Each of these was somebody’s considered answer.

  • Mays americana Baumg.
  • Mays vulgaris Ser.
  • Mays zea Gaertn.
  • Mays zea var. compressa DC.
  • Mays zea var. microstachya DC.
  • Mays zea var. purpurea DC.
  • Mayzea cerealis Raf.
  • Mayzea cerealis var. gigantea Raf.
  • Mayzea vestita Raf.
  • Thalysia mays (L.) Kuntze
  • Zea alba Mill.
  • Zea altissima J.F.Gmel. ex Steud.
  • Zea americana Mill.
  • Zea amylacea Sturtev.
  • Zea amylea-saccharata Sturtev. ex L.H.Bailey
  • Zea canina S.Watson
  • Zea cryptosperma Bonaf.
  • Zea curagua Molina
  • Zea erythrolepis Bonaf.
  • Zea erythrosperma Bonaf.
  • Zea everta Sturtev.
  • Zea gigantea hort.
  • Zea glumacea Larrañaga
  • Zea gracillima Voss

and 117 more.

Sourcesevery claim on this page

  1. World Flora Online Plant List. accepted name, authority, classification. CC0. Retrieved 2026-07-12.
  2. iNaturalist. photographs and flowering annotations, CC0 / CC BY / CC BY-SA only. per photograph. Retrieved 2026-06-27.

We publish what we can source and we say so when we cannot. This page has no care advice, no toxicity claim and no native range, because we do not yet have those from a source we can cite.