Cycad collecting for beginners
I have observed that cycads are collected mostly by middle-aged men, like me. And although technically, this is a "gardening" group, it has always seemed more like a bunch of overgrown boys trading baseball cards. Cycad collectors, like collectors of anything, tend to want to get as much as they can, and are attracted by the rarest specimens.
Of course, to the untutored eye, most cycads look pretty much the same. The difference in price can be incredible, though, from a common cycas revoluta (sago palm) that you can get at any Home Depot for twenty bucks to an Encephalartos woodii, which would cost you several thousand dollars just for a tiny specimen, small enough to sit on a window sill.
In fact, many cycads are so valuable that a black market has existed for a long time. To discourage these plants from being dug up in the wild, they have been protected by the countries where they grow, such as South Africa. Yes, people have gone to prison for smuggling cycads. Don't take my word for it, take a look at a CITES (Convention on International Trade) list of endangered plants.
I don't consider myself a collector, but I guess I am, as I have many species of cycads here. No, none of them are worth thousands of dollars! And if you like these plants, their future depends on cultivation in gardens. Their natural habitat is disappearing. But new plants are being grown, seeds are being distributed legally, even vegetative clones are being made available. Here in the Phoenix area cycads can be purchased by private growers, but are rarely seen in common nurseries. If you want a recommendation, I will give it to you, but only to growers who are not involved with wild collecting. Sorry, if you want to break the law and help destroy the environment, you're on your own.
The best cycad to start with is a cycas revoluta, commonly called a "sago palm". You can get beautiful, healthy ones at your local Home Depot. Of course by now you know that they aren't palms at all, so it's time to start reading Latin. Look at the tag. The genus is "cycas", the species is "revoluta". The family is Cycadineae, but that won't be on the tag, that just means that it's a cycad. Stay with me on this!
A type of cycad that grows well here in the Phoenix area is a dioon. They are more blue-green, and I have a lot of them here, as dioon edule, dioon spinulosum, and dioon edule variety palma sola. Yeah, if you're gonna collect cycads, you gotta learn a bit of Latin. I was told by a member of The Arizona Palm and Cycad Association, who is a doctor, that it's OK if you mispronounce the names, nobody really knows what Latin sounded like, anyway.
Happy collecting!
Pictured: a cycas revoluta that I rescued this year and planted two days ago. In the foreground is a Dioon spinulosum cycad, next to a Macrozamia moorei cycad. The plant in the background is a palm tree, a Phoenix rupicola x reclinata cross
Comments