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Which Cycad Species Am I?


palmsOrl

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I picked up this little cycad from a small farmer’s market under an overpass in Downtown Orlando around 1997.  The vendor told me that it was a somewhat rare species, but I lost the tag like 20 years ago.  It has followed me wherever I go ever since, growing at a truly glacial pace in the process.

The currently battered appearance of the plant is due to the recent move and it will probably take years to regrow that many new leaves.  Can anyone ID the species?

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Also, since I am asking about the above, am I correct that this cycad is “cardboard palm”, Zamia furfuracea?

 

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I would just cut the unwanted fronds off. In fact if you cut them all off at the caudex, the cycad will typically flush new ones sooner than otherwise. 

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That's just a Florida coontie and a cardboard. To non cycad people, coontie is a rare plant. The current approved name for a coontie is Zamia integrifolia.

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Yeah, I had Googled it, and seen that Florida coontie is also found in parts of The Caribbean under the name Z. pumila, but mine is probably the Fl variant, Z. integrifolia.  Not rare, by any stretch, but I like to collect Fl native plants so i am glad to have it.

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Florida coontie is not also in the Caribbean. There are all kinds of pumila types in the Bahamas, Jamaica, Puerto Rico, and Cayman, but they are not Florida coontie.

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17 hours ago, cycadjungle said:

Florida coontie is not also in the Caribbean. There are all kinds of pumila types in the Bahamas, Jamaica, Puerto Rico, and Cayman, but they are not Florida coontie.

This is the one I grow.   I've been told it's called "Crystal River."

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Edited by GeneAZ
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18 minutes ago, GeneAZ said:

This is the one I grow.   I've been told it's called "Crystal River."

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Beautifullllllll!

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Here's mine in inland southern California. Definitely is a female as it always pops out a bunch of cones in the summer. It's busy starting to flush now.

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If you guys want some pictures, I can take a few, but I have plants of:

Palatka Giant

Stiff upright coontie ( grows great in Arizona heat)

St. Augustine

Dade county

Crystal River

Cedar Key

Zamia integrifolia Var. broomei.   (Fanning Springs)

Ocala

Assorted undocumented types

 

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Here are two pictures off Palatka Giant. The one in my coontie article on my website is 14 feet wide and about 5 feet tall. It would be taller if it was in the shade. These have very wide leaflets.

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If you look closer to me, you will see the plant with very thin leaflets. It is hardly noticeable. This is the Dade county plant. (Miami area)

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These are the St Augustine plants. Wide leaflets typical of upper east coast, but smaller plants conpoated to the Palatka plants.

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Here is a bunch of smaller Cedar Key plants. Thin leaflet, west coast plant. They have a while to get big. These were pieces of stems I saved. Someone had dug up all the coonties at the CK museum, and left them to die. The rangers who work there called me up and asked for my help. By the time I got up there, they had been laying around for 3 weeks. They were all mutilated by the shovels and were rotting. We cut and treated 350 plants/pieces and they told me take what I wanted, for teaching them how to do it and helping out. I think I got about 60 of them.

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     This is the coontie from Spruce Creek, which is inland, around the Daytona area, east coast.

    I'm going to put a link here, because I will add another one later. This is my coontie article I wrote about 20 something years ago for the South African cycad journal. It talks about coontie taxonomy and I little history. It also has location maps and some pictures.

http://cycadjungle.mysite.com/cycadjungle/The Coontie of Florida.html

 

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     These are the plants that I have called the Fanning Springs form, which us pictured in my article I linked in the post before this. Type locality is in a golfing subdivision west of Gainesville and a little SE of Fanning Springs. This is the only coontie I have seen in Florida that goes deciduous in the winter time, so none of the habitat plants were very thick looking. They can hold two flushes, but they rarely do.

     Even though the original description of Zamia integrifolia was flawed, and should not be used, a group of taxonomists got together and decided to keep the description, instead of using the Zamia floridana description. Dan Ward, who helped me with my article, letting me use his maps, wrote a paper describing the different forms as variations. I am proud to say that Dan named this plant, Zamia integrifolia var. broomei. This is a pdf, but here is Dan's paper. I wasn't sure how it was going to go, but the taxonomists are accepting this paper, so it is official. As far as I know, this plant is not in cultivation beyond a few people.

http://www.phytologia.org/uploads/2/3/4/2/23422706/98_3_170-178ward_zamia.pdf

 

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Deciduous huh?  That is remarkable that this one variety of the species would be deciduous.   Is this variant ever offered fir sale?  Are there any other deciduous cycad species?

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I have never seen them in anyones collection. The area has been pretty much built up. As far as I know, I may be the only person with a sexed pair. I did sell a colony worth of seeds to one botanical garden in India.

   I have not seen any other coontie that does this, but the real Zamia fisheries and Zamia pygmea have a tendency to do this in certain circumstances.

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