What are Cycads?

Cycads are woody-stemmed, architectural plants that resemble ferns and palms. However cycads are not closely related to either of these plants. They are actually cone-bearing plants more closely related to pine trees. As mature plants, they resemble living sculptures.

Cycads are living fossils, having existed for nearly 280 million years on earth, since the Cretaceous and Jurassic periods. Many believe that cycads were a primary food of herbivorous dinosaurs.

There are fewer than 300 described species of cycads, found mostly in tropical and subtropical areas of the world, primarily in central and southern Africa, Australia, South and Central America, the Caribbean, and throughout Asia and the Pacific Islands.

Cycads have become more popular as landscape plants over the past 15-20 years, because people have come to appreciate their primitive and exotic beauty, their rarity and their value. Some of the more rare cycad species and large cycad specimens involve a serious investment. Collectors and cycad enthusiasts have been know to go to extreme lengths to obtain these special plants.

Cycads are endangered species, protected and regulated under international law. To support cycad preservation, we have propagated and grown hundreds of thousands of cycads from seed, and we promote the sale of nursery and garden-grown plants to re-populate the world with these historically significant plants.

When you purchase a nursery-grown cycad such as the plants we offer in these pages, you are part of a worldwide movement to preserve endangered species, by growing these rare and extraordinary plants.

Maurice Levin
The Jurassic Garden -- A&A Cycads

P.S. Take a look at this Brief Cycad Video for more information on cycads.