Albert's Greenhouse

I got about 4 or 5 seedlings of Zamia pseudoparasitica from a grower in Hawaii a few years ago, and they were variously donated to random people except for a pair I kept for myself. And those both formed cones for me this year. Surprisingly, considering my usual luck, I ended up with a matched pair of plants - one male ( on the right ) and one female ( on the left ). Which led me to ponder whether I might want to try a pollination experiment, and whether the cones would mature at the same time, and if I really wanted to stress the plants and generate more seed. And I went and looked up how to pollinate cycads, and it seemed kind of difficult and confusing, involving a dry method and a wet method and figuring out exactly when the respective cones were going to become fertile. And I decided that maybe it wasn't really worth it all. But it's neat to have a mated pair.

This particular species of Zamia isn't found too commonly in collections, and it's notable for being the only described epiphytic cycad. There's apparently an unnamed cycad found in Ecuador which also grows in trees. Zamia pseudoparasitica is from elevations around 1000m on the Atlantic side of Panama, where a combination of fog and nearly continuous strong winds shaped its habit.

I grow these plants in wooden orchid baskets lined with sphagnum and filled with a loose and coarse epiphyte friendly mix (might contain clay pellets, fir bark, charcoal chunks, packing peanuts - depends on what I had on hand when I potted them up ). They seem to like very warm temperatures, and plenty of water with their good drainage.

Back on 2002, two specimen plants of Zamia pseudoparasitica were stolen from Fairchild Tropical Garden in Miami, Florida. I saw the actual plants a few years before the theft, and they were absolutely huge, with fronds over 8 feet long. Despite an offered $25,000 reward, the plants were never recovered. Although it's difficult to imagine what would motivate someone to steal a couple of huge, airborne trees from a public garden, it's even more difficult to imagine how they might have done something like this - it's not easy to move trees that big even in daylight with the equipment and permission.

My Zamia psueudoparasitica family is luckily much smaller than that - over five years old, but still barely more than seedlings.