About ten years ago, on a visit to legendary cycad grower Dick Johnson, I bought some two leaf seedlings.  Mr. Johnson insisted that I buy an "arenarius."  I finally gave in and brought the two leaf seedling home, along with the others that I so cherished.

Well, those "cherished" cycads are plodding along in my yard ok...but the arenarius growth has been tremendous.  In fact, among the 25+ different cycad species I am growing, its growth rate is surpassed ONLY by C. revoluta.

January freeze?  I threw a heavy duty garbage bag over it...NO DAMAGE.

I highly recommend this cycad to anyone interested in the blue South African beauties.  

10 1/2 in honor of Dave of So Cal.  

I like the blue form like the one you have much better then the green.

Dear Glenn  

it seems you have a fentastic collection of all the exotic cycas

avaliable...and thanks very much for the stills and also your

recomendations as which looks good...

thanks for the info.

and i must say even iam a cycas plant lover & collector,so your

information is quite useful to me.

Love,

Kris  

(krisachar @ May 30 2007,12:10)

QUOTE

Dear Glenn  

it seems you have a fentastic collection of all the exotic cycas

avaliable...and thanks very much for the stills and also your

recomendations as which looks good...

thanks for the info.

and i must say even iam a cycas plant lover & collector,so your

information is quite useful to me.

Love,

Kris  

Thank you.  

I encourage all those interested to join the Cycad Society.  They have an excellent seed bank that offers seed a few times a year.

90% of my cycads are seed grown from seed obtained from the CS.

You have what I call the "Dick Johnson blush blue" arenarius. He called them blush blue and if you got that 10 years ago, that was probably from the same batch of single leaf plants I got 11 years ago. They are not as blue as the "true blue" that comes from that one farm in SA but this is one of the nicest arenarius around. Mine recurve at the ends which you don't see as much with that species. This is one of my favorite five cycad species. Here in Florida, we really don't do species like horridus very well, but these bluer arenarius plants look like a horridus on steroids, but they LOVE water and fertilizer. My record on this species when I was doing my older fertilizer experiments was 5 flushes in 1 year, only surpassed by Cycas taitungensis at 6 flushes. Hea, you coming to Cycad Day next month?

Hi Tom,

Yes, you are absolutely right!     I've seen the true blue arenarius at Maurice Levin's and they are definitely bluer.  The Dick Johnson bluish blue also tends to have the recurved leaves that you describe.  The growth rate on this plant is tremendous.  

Im planning on going to Cycad Day...hope to see you there!  

Erecting this thread from years back. I think Encephalartos Arenarius is way under used in gardens. Let’s see your “poor mans Latifrons” out there. No hybrids.

-dale

Blue Arenarius

Pure strain Arenarius

12 hours ago, Urban Rainforest said:

Pure strain Arenarius

Perfect plant Steve. 👍🏻

-dale

Here’s a better picture of the leaf pattern on the Blue Arenarius and also a few of my Green Arenarius. The green is not in full sun like the Blue and you can tell how “thin” the leaflets look in comparison. Blue has better form as it’s much more compact looking.

-dale

Blue Arenarius

Green Arenarius

Green arenarius with its first new frond with me

2 hours ago, Billeb said:

Here’s a better picture of the leaf pattern on the Blue Arenarius and also a few of my Green Arenarius. The green is not in full sun like the Blue and you can tell how “thin” the leaflets look in comparison. Blue has better form as it’s much more compact looking.

Nice comparison of the blue and green.

Here is my green arenarius, it’s in full blazing sun,

The leaf detail of the green,

My blue arenarius which gets a bit less sun,

Leaf detail of the blue,