Yum Kaax, the 'Lord of the Forest,' is the Yucatec maize deity, depicted as a youthful god of ideal beauty whose elongated head takes the form of a ripening ear of maize and whose headdress sprouts foliage. He corresponds to God E of the codices, called Nal or Ah Mun, the personified young corn plant whose vulnerability to drought, wind, and the death gods dramatizes the fragility of the harvest. In ethnographic Yucatec religion his name is understood as lord of the woodland and its wild game as well as the maize milpa carved from the bush, and he is propitiated by farmers when clearing and planting the forest.