the.com/cycad
a dinosaur's salad that outlived the dinosaurs and still refuses to evolve much.
means A cycad is a slow-growing, palm-like seed plant with a stout trunk and a crown of stiff, fern-like leaves, belonging to an ancient group that predates flowering plants.
from From the Greek 'kykas,' which is actually a mistake — it sprang from a misreading of 'koikas,' the plural of 'koix,' a Greek word for a kind of palm tree. So the name we use today preserves an ancient scribal slip, fittingly fossilized into a plant that's basically a living fossil itself.
- age
- basically unchanged for 280 million years
- toxic
- every part contains potent neurotoxins
- not palms
- more related to pine trees than palms
- slow growth
- some take decades to form a trunk
- hot sex
- males heat up to lure pollinating insects
encephalartos woodii — extinct in the wild since 1895, only one male specimen remained in kew gardens until 2019
cycas revoluta — sago cycad native to southern japan, commonly cultivated ornamental plant across tropical regions
dioon edule — mexican cycad whose seeds were traditionally eaten by indigenous populations in monterrey region