en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BBCH-scale

The BBCH are the growing stages in nummbers but thats not important i think
for simple players like me its just 4 -5 stages i think. ( i just think about the Animation stages) for me thats more important
i just take a look on the Growing Animation. you have to cut Maize when its from 80 BBCH to the end at the momet it cant die at the End of it.
i just look when maize gets a bit yellow its time to cut, stangely before its ready its much longer but that dont means that you ern more maize
Like you see the longer maize isnt ready
Sry i wish i coud help you better but i am German with bad English

In the German part of this forum are much much more informations about the BBCH
i hope some of them will Help you later to what you want to know about.

Here the BBCH from Gras in pics
Landwirtschaftliche Grundlagen für CnC

BBCH is an international scale to define plants growth level... Each sort of plant has its BBCH Table, that can be found on the web.

CNC uses BBCH to simulate plant growth

BBCH Info

I made a new (english) thread for the "when should I harvest?" question.