Zamia furfuracea – Cardboard palm.
Family Zamiaceae.
The Cardboard palm, in Subtribe Zamiinae, is a fairly common garden plant.
In young plants the trunk is underground and the long, arching leaves form a basal rosette.
Older plants develop an above ground trunk but only grow to about 1 m high and 2 m wide.
They may form multiple trunks and grow in clumps.
The stems are hairy.
The alternately arranged, pinnate leaves are up to 1.5 m long on petioles up to 30 cm long.
Each leaf has up to 12 pairs of stiff leaflets up to 15 to 20 cm long by 5 cm wide.
Young leaves are reddish due to the thick layer of hairs and older leaves are light green.
The hairs can be simple or branched and transparent or coloured.
There may be teeth towards the tips.
There is no midrib and the roughly parallel veins branch.
There are no spines at the base of the leaves.
Male and female cones are on separate plants with the sporophylls in vertical rows.
Male plants have clusters of brown cones that are smaller than the female ones.
The large female cones have megasporophylls that have no spines.
The roughly 3 cm long oblong seeds mature to a bright red.
J.F.
