PlantFiles: Wood's Cycad
Encephalartos woodii

This is one of the 'holy grails' of cycads for those really into cycads. This is a monstrous species that is very sought after, partly due to its magnificent size and shape, but also because of its rarity. There are only males of this species known in cultivation, and it is basically extinct in the wild. The only way to get one, is to remove a sucker from an existing plant, and those are very expensive and often fail to survive. You will not see too many of these in private gardens, but they do keep turning up somehow. Many cycad nuts are busy crossing this species with other Encephalartos and then back crossing them to, one day, have a nearly 'pure' genetic line with females in it, and therefore a renewable resource again. Problem is this species takes many years to start making cones, and we humans only live so long. And no matter how many back crosses you make, it will still never really be a real E woodei. There is a parent plant in the South African Durban Gardens with about 15+feet of trunk... looks a bit like a Phoenix palm it's so huge.

In the garden it is one of the more 'user-friendly' cycads in that it has not sharp edges/points on the adult leaves (immature plants do have more spines on them), and it makes an incredible specimen plant around which other smaller and varied cycads can be grown for a nice landscaping effect.