Well, one thing's for darn sure....nobody else on this board seems to have an awareness, let alone an appreciation for, this fine native plant, lol!

+oM

I grow the Cardboard Palm in a pot. I first saw it in Lafayette Louisiana and then grew them ever since. They are very tough. I put mine in the gh in the winter here but probably don't need to. It has been neglected a lot and seems very drought tolerant. I like a lot of the cycads :)

Very nice! Yes, very tough, non-fussy plants. Thanks, Sultry.

Hey Tom! I have an awareness and an appreciation for Zamias . . . but I've been super busy outside working in the yard and didn't get on the computer yesterday!

I never heard of zamias til we moved to Chokoloskee and then I thought they were the same thing as Cardboard Palm.

I noticed a row of them at a used car lot the other day and was tempted to ask if I could rescue some of the more pitiful looking ones. (I love the fact that they are larval hosts for the Atala Butterfly, which may not come up this far north in central Florida.) But I have WAY too many plants as it is already.

Thanks for bringing this subject up. Maybe more folks will chime in.

Susie

Thanks much, Susie! I agree-these things are great. It is the native version, AKA "coontie" which is of use to that butterfly. The larger-growing "cardboard palm" though has much to recommend it as well. I always think both of these plants are very reminiscent of large ferns. And when the coontie produces those orange seed structures-at least I think that's what they are-the effect is marvelous, albeit, nearly hidden if one is not observant.

+oM

Tom do you grow any cycads in pots? You could probably do it as long as there is somewhere to store them in the freezing months.

Tom, if you like coonties, you will like my article I wrote about 15 years ago for the cycad society of SA:

http://cycadjungle.8m.com/cycadjungle/The%20Coontie%20of%20Florida.html

I like them too! I have about 3000 of them and all the different forms.

Wowser Plantsman, I've got my reading to do now! Thanks.

+oM

PS......ok, great read. I''m puzzled though, by numerous sitings (myself) of what would be the wide-leaved form growing in natural areas of Lee and Collier counties, that are not shaded on the maps in your article. For example, 6-Mile Cypress Slough just outside Fort Myers-there are many in the area near to the parking lot. Were these planted then I wonder? Also, other random sitings in and around Forty Myers. Hhhmmm?

then there's the bigger cousin-"cardboard palm-itself an attractive if non-native type. Good-looking plants for sure, and preeminently amongst those earning the title of "low maintenance".

+oM

Plantsman56, you are Tom Broome? (subsequently edited to correct spelling) I've been reading your articles for years - I think I bookmarked your website on Cycad scale years ago! You helped me so much with my sago! I no longer have the sago, but recently got a coontie. I also played around with coontie seeds a few years back. I didn't stick with it long enough for them to germinate but I would give it another try. I know there are a lot of coonties, usually with seed cones, nearby on a college campus. I'll check.

Carol

Wis, since coonties are native to Florida, they are used as landscape all over most of Florida. Most larger municipalities require native plants in their landscaping, which is like medians, parking lots, etc. The problem is that they don't try to find types that were native to that particular area, which to someone like me, drives me crazy because it is possible for these introduced types to cross pollinate with near by habitat plants, which can ruin the ever dwindling native stands. I went to a state park one time to observe a natural population with some botanical garden people, and saw a new office building being landscaped with coonties that were native from the opposite side of the state.

Cardboards are Zamias native to Mexico. What will really throw you off, there are Zamias from most of the Caribbean islands that look like coonties. They are all called " pumila types". If you want to look some up, for a few, Zamia amblyphyllidia is the widest leaflet from PR, and Z. portoricensis has very thin leaflets and is also from PR. Zamia angustifolia has super thin leaf leaflets and come from Eluthera in the Bahamas. There are many others from other Bahama islands, Jamaica, Cayman, etc.

Carol, if you clean and plant your coonties seeds in May, according to my germination article, they will start sprouting within 2 weeks. Plant them in January when they fall out of the cones, and they may sit there for months.

Plantsman, thanks for all your help over the years. And yeah, you definitely know what you're talking about!!! Everyone in the cycad world quotes you and points/links to your site as the expert among experts!

Thanks for the quick tip about planting them in May... I'm going to give it a try as I have some absolutely perfect habitat for coonties and I need the bare space filled, preferably with something that will start from seed! Thanks so much for letting me know.

That is very interesting reading about mixing natives with non-natives. I learned something again!

And yeah, I knew your last name was "Broome" but somehow my typing fingers left the "e" off. I fixed it with a note that it was a subsequent edit.

Carol

The keys on making them sprout well is that you soak them in water for 24 hours, once you clean them. Plant them when the temperatures are in the high 80s and lower 90s and they sprout pretty fast. Remember, you don't bury cycad seeds, I put them in sand, only half buried, with the sprouting end up.

Wis, we are talking about Zamias here, and your cardboard is furfuracea. Here is a site put together by Ken Hill, who was a great guy. This page shows the classification of all cycads. Click on each genus, and just about every species is there along with a write up of each. Check out all the Zamias, but the rest are there too. If you have any questions, I've grown pretty much all the species, except for a lot of the Cycas, and a few others here and there that are so expensive ($1000-$4000 per inch of stem diameter) that I never wanted to invest in them.

http://plantnet.rbgsyd.nsw.gov.au/PlantNet/cycad/ident.html

Thank you, Plantsman. Your info provided here does indeed clear up some of my questions. and yes, I do believe all, or nearly all of the coonties I'd seen were likely landscape plants, not naturally-occurring. I do much "native restoration" work myself, albeit in a different part of the world, and I do indeed understand the issues of genetic disturbance/unwanted hybridization that comes with the distribution of plants will-nilly around the globe, even, as you describe, within one state. So much so, in fact, that in some select cases, I've had to "give up" in my own mind, so to speak, to try to preserve whatever bit of sanity I've got left! I do understand what you're saying. Another FL example, I would suppose, is the widespread planting of the glaucous forms of saw palmetto outside that variant's natural range. Some of this is sufficiently far along, I don't think there's anything any one of us can do to stem the tide. to some degree, I suppose I've come to accept it. Or as a member of Houz's NAtive Plants forum so eloquently described it when I discussed seeing people harvesting seeds of Silphiums in one of our planted prairies up here, that you could think of those guys as analagous to birds, spreading those genetics-probably with a "native to Wisconsin" or more directly, that part of Wisconsin where these seeds were harvested, tag on the bag of seeds! It's all a-jumble.

Thanks for that link! More rainy day reading.

+oM

I have coonties in the yard, because they're so cute, and so easy (I live on what was originally pine coastal ridge in Miami, so they're in their proper habitat here, understory plants.) I've never seen an Atala, and given how urban my neighborhood is (five-foot lot lines, postage stamp lots) I'm not totally surprised. But they are gorgeous landscape plants, especially in a part of the world where it's hard to keep a lot of plants under control. Question - my grandmother, a Florida native, told me years ago that you had to score the seeds to get them to germinate. She said this was because they evolved in a world where critters, racoons and such, would try eating the seeds and determine they were sour (her words) so they wouldn't actually eat them, just nibble them enough to open the seed. The seeds plant developed that scoring as part of how it germinated, she explained. My grandparents were Florida farmers, born of Florida farmers, so I trust a lot of what my grandmother told me as wisdom learned from generations of farming down here. She actually made coontie flour once, but only as an experiment because it fascinated her.

Anyone know if the scoring is right? Mine has seeded, and recently bore some volunteers, mostly under it. I'm actually headed out there tomorrow to try to lift them so I can put them somewhere where they'll get more space. But I wonder, did a squirrel score the seeds for me?

It may help, but there is no need to score the seeds to make them sprout. This month is the perfect month to plant them. Clean the seeds, soak them in water for a day, and plant them in sand, half way under, with the sprouting end out of the sand. You might get some to sprout within the month. One time in May, I forgot them in the bucket of water for a week, and 30% sprouted right in the bucket. ( I'm not telling you to do this though) I have written two cycad seed germination articles, so I can tell you everything you need to know if you get some seeds to start.

Great. Thanks Plantsman!