WOW Anna, with all these user names, I don't know who is who, and I didn't know anyone that writes on the forum had ever been out to see my place. If you ever get this way again, you should try to visit again. I have so many more plants since then and many of the ones that were medium sized are now getting huge. For that matter, anyone who is interested in cycads at all should try to make it out sometime. I know you people have local swap meetings, if there was a group of people who wanted to learn about something new, I would be happy to have a couple hour tour for a group of gardenwebers, and teach everyone as much as you could stand about cycads someday. The place IS a little rough though and proper attire is a good idea, but at least true plant people understand that kind of thing. I don't call this The Cycad Jungle for nothing!
Your ferox looks great! It will just speed up from here. I know starting with an Encephalartos seed might have not been the best way to go to play with germination because they seem to take longer than just about any other genus. I am glad you stuck it out and didn't throw away the seeds.
On your cone, with this species, it is sometimes hard to tell at this point, and from just a picture. Off hand, it looks like a male. Is the cone more like 3 to 4 inches in width, or more like 7 to 8 inches in width? The more narrow would be the male and a wider cone would be female. It is highly unlikely that you would get natural pollination of a Dioon here in Florida. It requires the presence of the weevil that does that in Mexico and from what I know, that insect doesn't live here in Florida. If that grows out some and ends up being a female, hand pollination is not difficult and pollen is usually available by other collectors, even though, they will usually ask for half the seeds for the breeding.

Oh, hi! Glad you got to see one of my little ones and your success at spreading the news about your passion of cycads. I definitely would love to visit your place again. I am in Sarasota, but travel frequently for my son's basketball tournaments. Sometimes we go your way on I4 toward Orlando, but it seems we are frequently in a hurry to get there at a specific time. I will have to plan more the next time we head that way and email you in advance.

Sounds like I probably have a male dioon. I will have to keep observing it to see if the cone gets any fatter. Interesting about the weevil. I didn't know that.

I definitely would recommend your place to anyone interested in learning more about cycads and seeing species they could only see at a botanical garden- probably not even there! I would be interested in seeing some of your palms and dyckias, etc. as well. I will make it again. My life seems impossibly emerged in teenagers right now, but I will make it sometime! Thank-you.

Anna

I look forward to having you all out again whenever it is easy to do. It takes a while to look around and I know how it is when you need to be somewhere specific. Hopefully, I will be right here doing the same thing for at least 20 more years, so there is plenty of time.
Just to expand on the weevil topic, about 20 years ago the general idea in the cycad world was that all cycads were wind pollinated. Willie Tang and Knut Norstog, working at the Fairchild research center performed many experiments and wrote a couple of really good articles showing these specific weevils pollinating the zamias they were experimenting with. Now, there are cycad research people that all they do is look at the relationships between certain cycad species and the insects that pollinate each species. For the most part, there is one species of weevil that only works with a particular cycad species. Things have come a long way since Willie's experiments. Another thing that is good about all this is that people are understanding how important it is to protect a habitat and not just a species in a habitat, because if the natural pollinator gets killed off, the cycad species is eventually doomed to extinction once the last plant dies.
In Florida, we have 2 insects that pollinate the coonties. One is a weevil and one is a beetle, they are Pharaxonotha zamiae and Rhopalotria slossoni. One of these spends their whole life cycle in and around the cones of coonties, where the other will feed on the pollen during the season that the coonties are receptive but then they go out and feed on other native species, like Sabal palmetto. We are now finding that the native weevils will also pollinate some of the other Caribbean zamias, which we call "pumila types" so people like me have to worry about accidental cross pollination. The same goes for Zamia furfuracea, "the cardboard plant" Furfuraceas were taken out of habitat by the 1000s a few decades ago and along with these large plants came the weevils. The problem with that is that all the furfuraceas in Dade county, for instance, produce seeds whether someone pollinates them or not. Homeowners with small dogs have to worry about this because if they have a female plant in their yard and the dog, or cat for that matter, eats about 5 to 10 seeds, they will die within 24 to 48 hours of kideny and liver failure. That is why I sell people only male plants for landscape use. Also, there again, there are several species like Zamia picta, inermis, loddigesii, and a few others that can get cross pollinated by these weevils in a large collection, or at a botanical garden. If you are a collector who buys cycads seeds, it is always good to stay away from seeds that come from botanical gardens that say that the seeds are "open pollinated" because you have no idea on what you will get. Anyway, those are the problems, but on the other hand, so far, we can be sure that ceratozamias, dioons, and encephalartos will not get pollinated naturally here in Florida. Sorry for the long post, I got carried away. Tom

Tom, it is easy to see you are passionate about what you do. You are truly lucky.

Very interesting about the pollinators. Just recently I noticed that several coontie had sprouted around one of my clumps of coontie. My DH pulled them thinking they were weeds! However, the same day I noticed a very strange black bug with fake eyes on the top (looked like a dark gray cockroach with white eyeliner on top). I tried to look up the pollinators you mentioned above, but this bug is clearly not either one. Is it possible for one of the coontie pollinators to be present this far north- in Sarasota?

I sure hope it doesn't take 20 years to make it to your place again. We are bound to be traveling your way a couple of times at least in the coming year.

Thanks again for your responses!

Anna

Go ahead and say it, I'm a crazy person! My father told me a long time ago to find what I love and do it for a living, and I would never have to work again. Pulling weeds is still work no matter how much I love the rest of it, and when things aren't selling, and making enough to pay the bills doesn't happen in certain months, that part still seems like work and worry, but when I am selling enough to pay the bills and have a little extra, I'm a happy person. Like tomorrow, I am doing a 2 hour presentation over at Disney Horticulture on cycads including a Powerpoint program showing many of the cycads at Dinoland, in Animal Kingdom, and that kind of thing I love to do. Anyway, I tell people all the time that I get to do what many plant loving people get to do after they retire, I just started early. I don't even have to worry about gas prices when I work in my back yard.
Back to insects. The pollinators are all over Florida, all the way to Jacksonville because lets face it, if a natural population of coontie exists, it can only be so because the pollinators are present. Whatever that thing was you saw, was not a coontie pollinator. They are very small, more like 1/4 inch at best. If you have seen the gaps that the female cones make when they are receptive, the insects have to be able to crawl down in the cone through those gaps. If you haven't seen that, I have pictures of that in my pollination article. Lets see if I can find a few things here.........
Here is an article on the pollinators:
http://www.plantapalm.com/Vce/biology/pollination.htm
That one only had drawings, but I remember Jody H. just sent a picture of a furfuracea cone on another forum......
http://www.palmsnorth.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=1854
Those are some good close up pictures. That male cone is only a few inches tall so you can see how small they are. The coontie pollinators are about the same size.

Crazy did not come to mind. Lucky and smart that your passion is your vocation. That you get to live it everyday.

Wow, that's a lot of bugs! I thought there would be one. I had no idea what took place. Learn something new here everyday. Thanks for taking the time to show me!

Anna

Hioe you were serious about having some gardenwebbes over because I kings extended an invitation from you. There has been some interest thus far and it seems like we might get a small contingent of people together. I would love to comesee your place also. I am in Orlando,l Linda

Please, no apologies for long post. I think it is so interesting and informative. We are so fortunate to have on the Florida forum such a cumulative amount of divers experience and knowledgeable gardeners. We are always learning
from each other.We also are presented with opportunities to visit each others "Laboratories". I thank you,cycadjungle for
your invitation.
Felix