Cycads

Those trees to your left and right are called cycads, the prehistoric predecessors of palm trees. ❋ Crichton, Michael, 1942- (1991)

Plants called cycads are among these rare "living fossils" - they have remained pretty much unchanged for more than 300 million years, but a study in ❋ Unknown (2011)

The bats ate up to 2.5 times their body weight (which can be as much as a pound for the species on Guam) in food such as cycads seeds every night and, on special occasions, Chamorros ate the bats. ❋ Unknown (2010)

Plants prohibited from import include many cycads, orchids and cacti. ❋ Mira Bartók (2011)

Near the summit grow cycads—stout-trunked, palm-like, cone-bearing trees that evolved in the late Carboniferous, 300 million years ago; they were among the first plants to have both cones and seeds. ❋ Sy Montgomery (2010)

I long to return to the beginning of the world, as I had dreamed as a child: to the time when the earth was swaddled in ferns and cycads, when the dinosaurs were first learning to fly. ❋ Sy Montgomery (2010)

I like to use tropical looking plants in our yard – usually numerous banana trees, one palm, a number of canna, tropical looking hosta, hanging baskets, and in pots an agave tree, a century plant cactus and two sago palm cycads. ❋ Unknown (2008)

First the aquatic plants, then the ferns and cycads succumbed. ❋ Unknown (2010)

An oxbow river to the right, with a riparian forest of cedars and redwoods bordered by cycads, but all around him was fern prairie, a rough terrain where it was hard to run and harder to hide. ❋ Sean Craven (2009)

Turns out cycads aren't so primitive in their reproductive process. ❋ Unknown (2007)

Stars arbitrate the carnivorous writhing of cycads. ❋ Lemon Hound (2009)

Just back from a weeklong book tour in Germany, Mr. Boyle fussed over three potted cycads in the dining room, muttering that he would have to replace them because they'd been overwatered in his absence. ❋ Unknown (2009)

By the end of the Paleozoic, cycads, glossopterids, primitive conifers, and ferns were spreading across the landscape. ❋ Unknown (2009)

Mesozoic rocks have been found in various parts of the archipelago, a very rich Jurassic fossil flora of ferns, conifers and cycads having been studied by Nordenskjold, some of the genera found being represented also in the rocks of South America, South Africa, India and Australia. ❋ Unknown (2009)

Germaine Greer on Ten Canoes: "The star of [Rolf] De Heer's film is, as Gulpilil would have wanted, the Arafura swamp, where the reflected blaze of the tropical sun splinters through cycads and paperbarks, against which the naked actors lope with inexpressible grace." ❋ Unknown (2007)