Cardboard Palm (Zamia furfuracea L. f. ex Aiton)

This garden flamingo sports a local lizard, the brown anole (Anolis sagrei), you have to look close. . .the lizard sits atop the flamingos head. The garden is overrun with anoles. there are probably 100 per square foot. . . they scurry around as you walk through the garden.

Of more interest for this blog is the plant behind both anole and flamingo; the Cardboard Palm (Azmia furfuracea). I've owned this specimen for about 20 years. It hasn't grown much in that time, but it seems perfectly happy on the south facing porch in Debary. It is slowly producing 3 'blooms' today. . .its been in the process of 'blooming' for several months.

Zamiaceae, the Sago-palm family is part of the cycad division of plants. Cycads are a unique assemblage of plants unrelated to any other group of living plants. Although they have the appearance of palms and ferns, they are not related to either. Within the living seed plants they are nearly unique in that they produce motile sperm cells, and thus are an important link to the earliest of the ancient plants. Cycads are known to have lived in the Permian era, over 200 million years ago. They reached their peak in the Jurassic Period between 193 million and 136 million years ago. The living cycads include about 250 species, with 11 genera in 3 families. The 3 living families can be traced back 50-60 million years ago. Cycads are the most ancient of plants surviving today.

Living cycads are found in the tropical, subtropical, and warm temperate regions of both the northern and southern hemispheres. One reason cycads have survived is their adaptablility. They have been found growing in extreme conditions, such as in sand or rock, in climates with hard freezes and snow, and in areas that have no more than a couple of inches of rain per year.

The Cardboard Palm's Classification is as follows:

Kingdom -- Plantae – Plants
Subkingdom -- Tracheobionta – Vascular plants
Superdivision -- Spermatophyta – Seed plants
Division -- Cycadophyta – Cycads
Class -- Cycadopsida
Order -- Cycadales
Family -- Zamiaceae – Sago-palm family
Genus -- Zamia L. – zamia
Species -- Zamia furfuracea L. f. ex Aiton – cardboard palm