Maize

Sadza made from white maize meal is Zimbabwe’s national dish – maize grows on almost every rural homestead.

Maize is a tall annual grass with a stiff stem and long, broad leaves. It is monoecious: the male flowers form a tassel at the top of the stem, and the female flowers form cobs in the leaf axils, from which long, thread-like silks hang. The kernels, arranged in rows on the cob, can be white, yellow, red or purple. It is grown for grain, fodder and silage, and the grain is made into flour, meal, oil and starch.

Significance in the country

Maize is Zimbabwe’s most important crop, and sadza – a thick porridge of maize meal (upfu) – is served with most meals alongside vegetables, meat or beans. Harvests depend heavily on rainfall, so droughts, such as those of 1992 and 2016, have caused severe food shortages.

Where it grows

Grown throughout the country, most of all in the fertile provinces of Mashonaland West, Central and East and in Manicaland; in drier Matabeleland yields are lower and less reliable.

A cultivated plant – the World Checklist of Vascular Plants (Kew) does not record it growing wild here. Source and licence

More: Wikipedia (en) Wikipedia (pl) Plants of the World Online (Kew)