Cycad Recovery after the Fire

These cycads are growing along the road in South Africa and guarded because they are illegally traded.

Cycads are a prehistoric plant, living in the time of dinosaurs. Some of the rarer ones are on the verge of extinction. My son brought home a “seedling” of a cycad in seventh grade when he was in Mr. Honda’s science class at Paul Revere Middle School. The dad who gave the “baby” plants to the students had a “prehistoric nursery” and spoke about the plants. Kids were told that cycads grow slowly and have long lifespans.

The plant sat by my sink, starting in 2006, slowly growing with minimal care. It grew enough that it needed a bigger pot. Then it grew even bigger and took over the counter.

At that point it was planted outside by the steps by our front door, in the sun. It seemed to thrive and needed little water. Then it continued growing until it was hard to get to the front door because its large, stiff and prickly leaves acted like a natural security guard. It desperately needed more room, but we hadn’t found a great place to move it, yet.

My son received a second plant because the nursery dad’s son played baseball with my son and at a special event for parents, the moms were given a plant.

This one grew slower, but at some point it outgrew the house, too, and was planted in the yard. It seemed to like its one spot on the corner of the yard. Prickly, occasionally, it would produce little cone-like objects, that I later learned were seeds.

The fire came and burned not only all my indoor and outdoor orchids, but also burned the leaves off the cycads. After nurturing the two cycads for decades, I was devastated.

My mom a master gardener said, “They cycads are probably still alive. After the fires in Australia, those cycads came back.”

My husband and daughter dug up the blackened stumps, put them in a pot and moved them to the balcony of our apartment. Little by little the first one came back, and this last week, it had taken over the middle of the balcony, so it was moved so it had its own corner to grow in  – until we can return it to Radcliffe.

Many people think that cycads are palms or ferns, but are not related to either. Cycads are perinnials with a long life span and are gymnosperms.  Meaning they are seed-producing plants and their unfertilized seeds, which resemble conifer cones are open to the air to be directly fertilized.

Cycads are dioecious, which means individual plants are either male or female, but both produce seeds. The plants pollinators are specific beetles.

The plants fix nitrogen in combination with cyanobacteria living in the plants roots. (Cynobacteria are among the oldest organisms on Earth with fossil records dating back at least 2.1 billion years.)

According to the Royal Botanical Kew Gardens, some cycads are thousands of years old  and because of that rarity “are struggling for survival because of illegal plant trade. In Kruger National Park in South Africa, next to the border with Mozambique, rangers are tasked with protecting extremely rare cycads and are sometimes armed.”

More than 180 countries are involved with the protection of listed plants through Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora. And DNA barcoding is used to identify species and the possible origins of illegally traded cycads. But plant crime is rarely prosecuted.

The Kew Gardens has an Eastern Cape giant cycal is the oldest potted plant in the world, which has been growing there since 1775. It weighs more than a ton and is taller than four meters. https://www.kew.org/read-and-watch/oldest-pot-plant-in-world-eastern-cape-giant-cycad.

It took much longer for the second cycad to come back, which may be a Zamia furfuracea. I patted its blackened back, we fed it fertilizer and little by little it also came back. It too is growing slowly back, waiting for a roomy place in our yard, once our home is built.

I feel sorry for people who build lot line to lot line—they’ll never have cycads.