Last week the girls from the office traveled to South Florida to attend the Tropical Plant Industry Exhibition. While they were down there, they also went to Fairchild Tropical Botanic Garden--a favorite garden of mine because it has a sizeable cycad collection. Cycads are a group of plants that have been around since the age of the dinosaurs.
The girls took a picture of an Encephalartos ferox in the gardens. I'm still waiting for my own E. ferox to get this big. I started it from seed about a year ago and it's slowly but surely getting bigger.
I have a few other cycads in the mini-nursery on my windowsill and desk, including Zamia skinneri (the wider-leafed cycad toward the right of the frame) and Macrozamia riedlei (the feathery looking cycad near the center of the frame). The Macrozamia can be planted outdoors in the freeze-free areas of Florida. They'll eventually grow to be 4 to 6 feet tall and wide.
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