Cycads are tough plants. They have lived on Earth for about 300,000,000 years. They were here before the dinosaurs and the flowering plants and they are still here, but with far fewer species than in the past (currently they are represented by fewer than 100 species). Cycads are seed plants in the gymnosperm group so no fruits instead they produce cones with seeds. It is of note that cycads produce their leaves on an annual basis at the top of a woody caudex. The somewhat palm-like leaves arise from the top of the caudex in many species and many cycads have “palm” as part of their common name (palms, though, are flowering plants). “Sago palm”, Cycas revoluta, is one common name of a species of cycad that is familiar to many people as it is the species most commonly available at nurseries. Cycads are evergreen. After a new set of leaves develops, some of the older leaves die (dead leaves remain attached to the plant and must be cut off if you want a tidy plant). A number of people fervently collect and grow these exotic-looking sub-tropical and tropical plants. They prefer warm weather and must be wintered indoors here in bright light and in well-drained soil. They are very sensitive to being overwatered but a really well-drained soil mix makes this difficult to do (for all kinds of plants, far more plants are killed by overwatering than by under watering).
Many years ago, while on a working trip to Florida, I came upon a stretch of highway that was being widened. The trees and shrubs along the roadside had already been cut down and the stumps pulled out of the ground. Still growing were the understory plants which included a large number of coontie, Zamia floridana, which is a cycad native to the SE US. Cycads have tap roots that are large and starchy and in the past, were used as a food source. Knowing they would all be destroyed by highway construction, I dug up one of the cycads (bareroot in the middle of summer) and a bucket full of the sandy soil.
I brought the cycad home and planted it in a large pot with the sandy soil taken from the site. Within a few months, the leaves had all turned brown because of being uprooted in the middle of summer and the plant now looked like a rather dead caudex without leaves. After about a year, I gave up on the cycad and discarded it in a brush pile to be composted later. I left the cycad sitting atop the brush pile for five years before I finally got around to clearing it out. When doing so, I picked up the cycad caudex, which had not rotted, and scratched its surface. To my surprise, the scratch revealed green tissue.
So, I then repotted the cycad and within a few months, it had a new set of green leaves. But, the story does not end there…
After about a month, I decided to give the cycad a shot of fertilizer as a reward for re-sprouting and to help it along. Well, I must have overdone it because within a few days, the new set of leaves was turning brown. Shortly, it looked as dead as a doornail. Being certain that I had poisoned it, back it went onto another compost heap. It stayed there for a year until the following spring when I noticed that a new set of leaves was emerging. Once again, I potted it up and, once again, it grew a healthy new set of leaves.
This time, no excess fertilizer would touch its roots. The plant remained in my care for 39 years growing very slowly as cycads do. When I collected it, it was a 2-branched caudex. It eventually became a 6-branched caudex still less than six inches tall (with leaves, the plant is about 18” tall) after probably over 50 years of growth (I estimated its age when dug up at between 10 and 20 years). The caudex of Z. floridana remains at just above ground level even after decades of growth because coontie plants don’t grow upward, they grow outward to become wider and wider as they branch (some cycads do grow upward slowly and some don’t branch). It spent its whole life after being dug in a pot (excluding its vacations on the compost heap). Very, very unfortunately, it was caught in the deep freeze in our area of a few years ago. This time there would be no revival.
Regards, A Seedy Character
(Paul Young is a member of the Willapa Valley Grange)
Terrific! I know that he has posted over twenty on the Willapa Valley Grange e-mail list - will you be posting all of them on this site?
Posted by: Gail Friedlander | May 02, 2011 at 10:44 PM