Here are the three large specimens of
Encephalartos woodii seen at Lotusland. These have a fair claim to be among the world's rarest plants because they are extinct in the wild and the last known specimen, from which all garden specimens derive, was male.
The Cycad Garden has been called a “million dollar garden” because its
development coincided with the auction of Madame Walska’s enormous
jewelry collection, which fetched nearly that amount.
Kew Gardens in London has another large specimen of
Encephalartos woodii and their website has some
interesting information on it, and on rare cycads and cycad collecting.
Discovery
In 1895, a single clump of this cycad was discovered by John Medley Wood
on the edge of a forest in South Africa. In 1903, Wood sent his deputy,
James Wylie to collect some of the smaller offsets for cultivation in
the Durban Botanic Garden, where they survive to this day. More offsets
were collected from the wild until finally in 1916, the Forestry
Department collected the last remaining stem, making the species extinct
in the wild. To date, no other wild specimen has been discovered. Two
more male cycads have been found that resemble E. woodii but
are not identical. All of them are male. The successful cultivation of
offsets of the original plant has ensured the ex-situ preservation of
this enigmatic species.
The search for a female
Although the area in which the original Wood’s cycad was discovered is
well explored, it is yet to be thoroughly surveyed. Consequently, there
is still hope that a female plant will eventually be found, and that
could reproduce with the growing population of male clones in
cultivation. Alternatively, there is a remote possibility that one of
the plants in cultivation will undergo a spontaneous sex change, as has
been documented in a few cases in other cycad species. Meanwhile,
efforts are being made to create a female plant by crossing Wood’s cycad
with the closely related E. natalensis. By successively
backcrossing the female hybrid offspring with male Wood’s cycads, the
aim is to eventually produce a ‘pure’ female. The project has currently
created second generation crosses.
Cycad collectors
The rarity of these cycads is part of their appeal to a network of
smugglers and thieves, who try to evade restrictions placed on plant
movements by the CITES treaty. The other is a network of willing and
obsessive buyers who grow their collections in secrecy to avoid having
their own illegal plants removed. Enormous sums of money change hands,
and because of the rarity of the species and their colourful history,
offsets can sell for as much as $20,000 each.
It is therefore not surprising that theft is a serious problem. It is
so serious that the San Diego Police Department in southern California
assigned an officer to 'cycad beat' to monitor these precious plants.
Elsewhere in the Hollywood Hills, Brad Pitt, Oprah Winfrey, David Bowie
and Kevin Costner are among the celebrities that cycad-sellers report as
collectors. ''I planted a huge grove of them in Brad Pitt's garden,''
says Jay Griffith, his landscape designer. ''And Brad flipped. He kept
saying, 'I want more and more.' To me, they are most majestic when you
plant gobs of them. You expect a triceratops to come around the corner
and just gobble them up.'' Brad is not infringing any regulations
though: his cycads are the commoner cycad species, Cycas revoluta, the so-called sago palm.
