Definitions

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.

  • noun Any of various gymnospermous cone-bearing evergreen plants of the division Cycadophyta, native to warm regions and having large pinnately compound leaves.

from The Century Dictionary.

  • noun A fossil cycadean trunk belonging to either of the genera Cycadeoidea or Bennettites.
  • noun One of the Cycadaceæ.

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.

  • noun (Bot.) Any plant of the natural order Cycadaceæ, as the sago palm, etc.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • noun botany Any plant of the division Cycadophyta, as the sago palm, etc.

from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.

  • noun any tropical gymnosperm of the order Cycadales; having unbranched stems with a crown of fernlike leaves

Etymologies

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition

[New Latin Cycas, Cycad-, genus name, from Greek kukas, erroneous reading of koïkas, accusative pl. of koïx, doum palm, from Egyptian ḳwḳw, fruit of the doum palm.]

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

From New Latin Cycas ("genus of tropical trees")

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Examples

  • The bird bends down to delicately lift an orangish fruit—the seed of a cycad?

    Birdology Sy Montgomery 2010

  • One of the long-necked creatures neatly bit off the crown of a cycad and continued its lumbering progress with huge fronds dripping from its not too capacious mouth.

    Cattle Town 2010

  • Ms. Coelho, who not only can wax poetic about the female epiphytic cycad in the Botanical Garden's New World Lowland Rainforest exhibit or the incendiary Capsicum chinense peppers in the Edible Garden area but who also spars gamely with chipmunks on her own property, in Putnam Valley couldn't have been more generous with her time or patient with my level of horticultural idiocy.

    Growing Tomatoes With a Pro 2010

  • University of Utah scientists discovered a strange reproductive method in primitive cycad plants: The plants heat up and emit a toxic odor to drive pollen-covered insects out of male cycad cones, and then use a milder odor to draw the bugs into female cones so the plants are pollinated.

    October 7th, 2007 2007

  • Patches of dry deciduous forests, especially along the Tirupathi Hill Ranges, are known for a large number of medicinal plants and various other species of botanical interest, among which are the rare endemic cycad (Cycas beddomei) and Psilotum nudum.

    Deccan thorn scrub forests 2008

  • These are areas with high numbers of endemic plants and some very primitive species, such as the cycad Zamia.

    Rio Negro campinarana 2008

  • Other primitive plants include the cycad, Cycas rumphii, and the giant Agathis macrophylla and Dacrydium nausoriense.

    Fiji tropical moist forests 2007

  • Aleurites moluccana, Ficus theophrastoides, areas of bamboo (Bambusa spp.), and the gymnosperms Podocarpus neriifolius, a cycad (Cycas seemannii), and Gymnostoma vitiense.

    Fiji tropical dry forests 2007

  • The endemic cycad (Encephalartos turneri) is found on some of the surrounding inselbergs.

    Eastern Miombo woodlands 2007

  • International trade threatens a range of species, from birds such as the brownheaded parrot (Poicephalus cryptoxanthus) whose populations have been severely impacted by trapping for the cagebird trade, to plants such as the rare and localised Retief cycad (Encephalartos lebomboensis), which has been decimated by cycad collectors.

    Maputaland coastal forest mosaic 2007

Comments

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  • cf. coontie

    January 1, 2009