Abstract: A field experiment with three selected cultivars("Zhongdan 9409", "Zhongyuandan 32"and "Gaoyou 115") were conducted to investigate the relationships between the canopy spectral reflectance and the leaf cellulose content at different vertical layers at seven growth stages of maize plants. The leaf cellulose content and the hemicellulose content tended to decrerase from the upper layer to the lower layer at all the growth sages. The largest relative difference in the leaf cellulose content reached 34.9% among the three cultivars, but the difference was smaller among the lower layers than that among the upper layers or among the middle layers. The canopy reflectances at fifteen selected wavelengths were correlated with the leaf cellulose content and the leaf hemicellulose content, and the results showed that the canopy reflectance at 1420, 1450, 1490, 2100 nm and 2270 nm appeared to be significantly related to the leaf cellulose content, and that at 2270, 2280 nm and 2340 nm significantly related to the leaf hemicellulose content.