The appearance resembles a palm tree for the stem, shortly branched, and for the arrangement of leaves, large and feathery spiral placed at the top of the barrel, like a crown. But it is not a palm tree, belongs to the family of Cycads, ancestral plants 2 million years old, came up to us as living fossils in a dozen genres. Cycas revoluta , was discovered at the end of 700, is native to southern Japan. It was made for the first time at home in Europe in 1793, at the Botanical Garden of Palermo.
The stem reaches a diameter of about 20 cm and has a very slow growth: a few centimeters long in the young plants, in very old specimens (over 50 years) can reach 6-7 m in height. The leaves are bright green and up to 1.5 meters long, are pinnate, slightly arched, shiny and sharp. The individual leaves, stiff and thin, are 8-18 cm long, those closest to the trunk are modified in the form of thorns.
The young leaves appear in spring at the height of the stem in large groups, at the time of emergence from the stem are curled up and covered with dense hair, in a few days unfold and reach quickly the appearance of mature leaves.
It is a dioecious plant, with separate flowers on different plants, the type of reproduction is ancestral as the plant itself, are grouped in the individual female's eggs, small at first, only if fertilized swell to form a mature egg. The male plant bears a cone that secretes the pollen, the insemination method is similar to that of the conifers, which, however, differs.
male cone
Ovar ova-bearing female
Egg cleaned from the skin
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