Cycas cupida

Cycas cupida is a thick-trunked cycad with powder-blue foliage that grows only in the Terrace Range, a low, isolated sandstone range south of Charters Towers in central Queensland, Australia. This species of the genus Cycas was described in 2001 by Paul Forster, of the Queensland Herbarium, barely a year after botanists first heard of it. Its name, from the Latin cupidus, “desirous”, is a nod to the eagerness with which collectors seek out the blue cycads. It is the most recently described member of Queensland’s group of “blue cycads”, and the IUCN lists it as Near Threatened.

Key facts about Cycas cupida

  • Accepted name: Cycas cupida P.I.Forst. (2001), according to The World List of Cycads; POWO could not be consulted directly
  • Former names and synonyms: none; the name has not changed since the species was described
  • Family: Cycadaceae, order Cycadales
  • Common names: no English or Aboriginal name could be verified
  • Natural range: Australia, central Queensland, Terrace Range south of Charters Towers (South Kennedy district); a single known population
  • IUCN status: Near Threatened (NT), reassessment by J. D. Bösenberg (Red List version 2023-1), NT according to GBIF; first assessment by P. Forster (2010), criterion D2
  • CITES and other protection: CITES Appendix II (seeds exempt under annotation #4); Annex B in the European Union
  • Documented hardiness: no measured value; to be kept frost-free (see Cold hardiness)
  • Light and soil: full sun; in the wild, open woodland on sandstone ridges, scree and rocky outcrops, sometimes in cracks in small cliffs
  • Habit and adult size: trunk to 6 m tall and 20 to 30 cm across, rarely branched; leaves 72 to 130 cm long in the original description, arching to about 1.5 m on plants recorded in 2024
  • In the UK, US and Australia: Royal Botanic Garden Sydney, Australian Botanic Garden Mount Annan and James Cook University, Townsville; Montgomery Botanical Center and Naples Botanical Garden (Florida), San Diego Botanic Garden and San Diego Zoo (California), University of Minnesota conservatory; no British record
  • Toxicity: not studied for the species; treat it as poisonous, like all Cycas (see Toxicity and precautions)

How to recognise Cycas cupida

Look for a stout trunk, strongly keeled leaves dusted with a blue-grey bloom, leaflets that keep their full width right down to their base, and rusty-brown down on the new growth, the cataphylls and the cones. Paul Forster’s original description (2001) gives the following characters:

  • Trunk: up to 6 m tall and 20 to 30 cm in diameter, rarely with several heads.
  • Leaves: 72 to 130 cm long, straight or slightly wavy towards the tip and strongly keeled, the opposite leaflets meeting at an angle of 30 to 50°; usually ending in a pair of leaflets; petiole 12 to 26 cm long, with blue-grey down and 12 to 26 small teeth about 2 mm long, rarely unarmed.
  • Leaflets: 174 to 240 per leaf, 150 to 240 mm long and 5 to 7 mm wide, covered in a blue bloom (grey-green beneath the wax), almost flat, not narrowed where they join the leaf axis (90 to 100% of their maximum width); midrib slightly raised above, clearly raised below.
  • New growth and cataphylls (the scales that protect the growing point): dense rusty-brown down; cataphylls sharp, linear, 70 to 95 mm long and downy along their whole length.
  • Male cones: elongated ovoid, 25 to 33 cm long and 10 to 16 cm across, with rusty-brown down; terminal spine of the microsporophylls 5 to 12 mm long, curved forwards.
  • Megasporophylls (the fertile leaves of female plants): 22 to 30 cm long, at first covered in rusty down, then blue-grey and bloomed; 4 to 6 ovules, usually 4; blade broadly triangular, 45 to 60 mm long and 25 to 35 mm wide, clearly toothed, with a terminal spine of 15 to 18 mm.
  • Seeds: ovoid, 35 to 40 mm long and 32 to 35 mm wide, heavily bloomed grey-blue, green beneath the wax and purplish yellow when ripe.

Forster (2001) notes that every cycad in this group is more or less blue: some lose the colour quickly, others keep it. Cycas cupida keeps it, without reaching the intensity of Cycas cairnsiana. Plants examined in February 2024 by a team including botanists from Montgomery Botanical Center were described on their herbarium labels as erect, up to 5 m tall, with leaves arching to 1.5 m, petioles mostly spineless, narrow leaflets about 14 cm long and a very blue wax.

Hybrids

No natural hybrid is known: the only population lies more than 200 km from its nearest relatives. A grower on the French forum Fous de palmiers mentioned garden crosses with Cycas thouarsii in 2013, without further detail; this has not been corroborated.

Possible confusion

Its two closest relatives, Cycas couttsiana and Cycas desolata, both grow more than 200 km to the north. According to Forster (2001):

  • Cycas desolata has sparser leaves (90 to 136 leaflets instead of 174 to 240), leaflets narrowed at the base, much shorter cataphylls (30 to 45 mm instead of 70 to 95 mm) that are not downy along their whole length, and slimmer male cones.
  • Cycas couttsiana has a slimmer trunk (14 to 20 cm instead of 20 to 30 cm), grey-white rather than rusty down on the new growth, smaller male cones and megasporophylls with a narrowly, not broadly, triangular blade.
  • Cycas cairnsiana has much narrower leaflets (2 to 3 mm wide) with rolled-under margins.

Plants of this group can be hard to tell apart out of their habitat: in 2025 Montgomery Botanical Center stressed that their morphological similarities make accurate identification challenging.

Taxonomy

Cycas cupida is accepted by The World List of Cycads; POWO could not be consulted directly. Paul I. Forster described it in “Cycas cupida (Cycadaceae), a new species from central Queensland”, Austrobaileya 6(1): 153–160 (2001). The type, a male plant, was collected on 11 December 2000 in the Terrace Range by Forster and Booth (no. PIF26540B); the holotype is at the Queensland Herbarium (BRI), in Brisbane.

Forster places it in series Cairnsianosae, defined by Ken Hill (1996, 1998), which with it comprises six species: Cycas cairnsiana, Cycas couttsiana, Cycas cupida, Cycas desolata, Cycas ophiolitica and Cycas platyphylla. The group is characterised by lower leaflets that are not reduced to spines, more or less rolled and strongly bluish leaflets, a continuous protective layer beneath the leaf epidermis, and medium-sized, ovoid, orange or brown male cones. The species has had no other name since its description. In 2025, Montgomery Botanical Center announced a genomic study of the “Cycas cairnsiana group” to clarify species boundaries and define conservation units; its results had not been published at the time of writing.

Etymology and history

The epithet comes from the Latin cupidus, “desirous”, and alludes to the appeal of the plant to cycad collectors (Forster 2001; Haynes 2022). Forster had already written in 1999 about the “six blue cycads of desire” of Queensland, and he expected collectors’ interest in the new species to be intense.

The story of its discovery is short. In October 2000, Tim Perry and S. Lawler collected specimens of a blue cycad on sandstone well south of Charters Towers (a label published through GBIF records trunks to 6 m, male cones and seeds); early in November, Perry, then with the Queensland Environmental Protection Agency in Townsville, sent material and photographs to Forster. Forster visited the population in December 2000, collected fertile material and described the species the following year.

Common names

No English vernacular name is established in the literature, and no Aboriginal name could be verified. In nurseries and on garden labels the plant goes by its scientific name.

In the wild

Cycas cupida is confined to the Terrace Range, a low, isolated sandstone range south of Charters Towers, with outcrops and small sandstone cliffs. According to Forster (2001) and the herbarium labels of the type collection, the vegetation is open woodland dominated by Corymbia clarksoniana, Corymbia dallachiana and Eucalyptus crebra, with a mid-storey of wattles (Acacia bidwillii, Acacia excelsa, Acacia salicina), Terminalia oblongata, Eremophila mitchellii and Lysiphyllum hookeri, on sandstone ridges and colluvium. The cycads are scattered throughout this habitat, most numerous on the low hills, sometimes clustered in gullies and along creeks on sandstone scree, and occasionally rooted in cracks in the cliffs. The site is dry for part of the year and very hot in summer, the bare rock reflecting the heat.

The herbarium labels published through GBIF add field observations: a male cone shedding pollen and visited by active insects (December 2000), and, in February 2024, a “very large and extensive population” of more than 800 plants on a rocky sandstone outcrop, “seasonally dry” and dominated by cycads, eucalypts and grasses. No pollinator has been identified for the species.

Conservation status and regulation

Cycas cupida is listed as Near Threatened (NT) by the IUCN: J. D. Bösenberg’s reassessment was published in Red List version 2023-1 (reference checked on Crossref), and the IUCN data relayed by GBIF give it the NT category (consulted on 21 October 2026). The first assessment, by Paul Forster in 2010, used criterion D2, which concerns species with a very small area of occupancy or very few locations. In the original description, Forster estimated the suitable habitat at less than 60 km², with thousands of plants in a single large population and no immediate threat from clearing or agriculture; he then proposed the category Vulnerable (D2), and stressed above all the risk of collecting. In 2025, Montgomery Botanical Center wrote that Cycas cupida and Cycas desolata are “absent from most collections” and “on the brink of being listed as critically endangered”, and that the blue cycads of northern Queensland have suffered significant declines through the collection of plants and seed; these statements come from a garden newsletter, not from a published Red List assessment. The online Flora of Australia has no profile for the species, and no Queensland listing could be checked. The Red List itself could not be consulted directly.

Like every species in the genus except Cycas beddomei, Cycas cupida is listed in CITES Appendix II, through the listing of the family Cycadaceae, included since 4 February 1977. The listing carries annotation #4 (CoP20 version, in force since 5 March 2026): seeds, pollen, seedlings or tissue cultures obtained in vitro and transported in sterile containers, and cut flowers of artificially propagated plants, are not subject to CITES, whereas international trade in the plants themselves requires an export permit. Australia, the United Kingdom and the United States apply CITES through their own national legislation; in the European Union the species is in Annex B of Regulation (EC) No 338/97, whose annexes in force are set by Commission Regulation (EU) 2026/1383, applicable since 29 June 2026. Species+, the official CITES database, names the species and confirms this status. This general information does not replace the official texts: check the rules in force before buying or exchanging plants, and ask for proof that the plant was raised in cultivation.

Growing Cycas cupida

In short: published growing data are almost non-existent. A specialist nurseryman ranks it among the “difficult” Australian Cycas in Europe; full sun, summer heat, a very mineral substrate and a dry winter are the general rules for the blue cycads of Queensland, and outside warm climates it is a plant for a pot under glass.

Outdoor and in-ground cultivation

No account of open-ground cultivation specific to Cycas cupida has been published. Its habitat, hot, free-draining sandstone in a seasonally dry climate, suggests full sun, perfect drainage and a dry rest; this is a deduction from the habitat, not a documented growing result. Most of the accessions held by Australian and American gardens (see below) date from 2022 and 2024, so they say little yet about the long-term behaviour of the species in a garden. In a 2021 note on growing Australian Cycas in a European climate, the French nurseryman Simon Lavaud (Cycadales.eu) places Cycas cupida in his “difficult” class, with Cycas cairnsiana, Cycas couttsiana and Cycas desolata, and sees the complete absence of cold and plenty of water in hot weather as the keys to good growth.

Container cultivation

In the United Kingdom and other temperate regions, it is a plant for a large pot under glass. Simon Lavaud’s general advice for the Australian Cycas is a very mineral substrate (even pure pumice), the brightest possible position, a glasshouse to lengthen the growing season, and generous watering when nights reach 18 to 20 °C (64 to 68 °F) and days 30 °C (86 °F), reduced below 20 °C (68 °F) and stopped when nights fall below 10 °C (50 °F), because of the risk of root rot. On the Italian forum Tropicamente, a grower in Ravenna reported in 2014 that seedlings from a batch of seed were coming up and found the species “not so slow”; this is the only first-hand report found. The Jardin zoologique tropical at La Londe-les-Maures, in the south of France, has published no observation on Cycas cupida, so no Mediterranean experience can be passed on to readers in California or southern Australia.

In cultivation in the UK, US and Australia

The species reached botanic gardens late, and most of the accessions listed are recent and of wild origin. Each source below is a catalogue entry or a declaration, not proof that a plant is alive today.

  • Australia: the Royal Botanic Garden Sydney holds one accession of wild origin, S2022-0442 (Garden Explorer, updated 1 October 2026), and the Australian Botanic Garden Mount Annan seven, A2022-19542 and six accessions from 2024, all of wild origin (Garden Explorer, updated 15 October 2026). James Cook University, in Townsville, declares the species in BGCI PlantSearch.
  • United States: the online catalogue of Montgomery Botanical Center (Coral Gables, Florida), which grows its cycads in the open, lists twelve accessions, one whose number dates from 2014 and eleven from 2024; the garden’s 2025 newsletter explains that seed of Cycas cupida was collected in the wild during an expedition to northern Queensland (the herbarium specimens from this trip are dated February 2024), half of the seed being raised in Australia and half added to Montgomery’s living collections to build “assurance colonies”. BGCI PlantSearch also lists Naples Botanical Garden (Florida), San Diego Botanic Garden (Encinitas) and San Diego Zoo Botanical Gardens (California), and the conservatory of the University of Minnesota College of Biological Sciences (St Paul), without saying whether these plants grow outdoors or under glass.
  • United Kingdom: no record in BGCI PlantSearch or in the British garden catalogues consulted.

No other European garden declares the species in BGCI. No report from a private grower in the UK, US or Australia could be read; PalmTalk and Dave’s Garden could not be consulted.

Propagation

Like all Cycas, Cycas cupida is dioecious and is raised from seed: a male and a female plant are needed for fertile seed. The grower in Ravenna mentioned above reported in 2014 that, from a batch of ten seeds, one seedling had produced its first leaf, three more seeds had put out a root and two had been lost. No published germination data specific to the species have been found. Seeds are exempt from CITES under annotation #4; given the warnings about collecting in the wild, ask for seed from cultivated plants or from documented conservation programmes.

Pests and diseases

No pest or disease specific to the species is documented. Like all Cycas, it is exposed to the Asian cycad scale, Aulacaspis yasumatsui, and, like the other blue cycads of Australia, to root rot in a cool, wet substrate (Lavaud 2021).

Cold hardiness

No cold-tolerance value has been published for Cycas cupida, and no dated outdoor report of frost damage or survival has been found. Its habitat lies in the seasonally dry tropics of central Queensland; any figure offered without a documented trial should be treated with caution.

European experience

No open-ground result has been published in Europe. The species appears on the French forum Fous de palmiers only in a list of garden crosses (2013), and on the Italian forum Tropicamente only as seedlings in Ravenna (2014). In the absence of data, grow it under glass, frost-free and dry in winter.

United Kingdom, United States and Australia

No cold reading and no growing report were found. The documented plantings are in subtropical or tropical settings (Sydney, South Florida, coastal Southern California) or under glass (Minnesota); no observation of these plants in winter has been published. No USDA zone can be given without a documented trial.

Toxicity and precautions

No toxicity analysis specific to Cycas cupida has been found. The risk is, however, well documented in the genus: Cycas tissues, and the seeds above all, contain cycasin, which is converted during digestion into methylazoxymethanol, toxic to the liver and nervous system, along with a neurotoxic amino acid, BMAA. North Carolina State University notes that cycasin is present in all parts of the plant, and the ASPCA lists the sago palm (Cycas revoluta) as poisonous to dogs, cats and horses, with vomiting, sometimes bloody diarrhoea, jaundice and liver damage that can be fatal. Until proven otherwise, treat the plant as poisonous: wear gloves to handle the seeds and their fleshy coat, pick up fallen seeds, and keep plants and seeds out of reach of children and pets. If any part is swallowed, contact a poison centre, a doctor or a vet straight away.

Traditional uses

No traditional use specific to Cycas cupida has been found in the sources consulted.

Frequently asked questions

What does “cupida” mean?

“Desirous”, from the Latin cupidus. Paul Forster chose the name to recall how eagerly collectors seek out the blue cycads.

Where does Cycas cupida grow?

Only in the Terrace Range, south of Charters Towers in central Queensland, on sandstone ridges and outcrops in open eucalypt woodland.

Does it stay blue all year?

Yes, according to its description. It keeps its blue-grey bloom, without reaching the intense blue of Cycas cairnsiana.

How can it be told from Cycas couttsiana?

By the down on the new growth. It is rusty brown in Cycas cupida and grey-white in Cycas couttsiana; Cycas cupida also has a thicker trunk and leaflets that do not narrow at the base.

Can it be grown outdoors in the UK?

No, on the evidence available. No cold tolerance has been documented and no open-ground trial is known in a frosty climate; it is grown in a pot under glass, frost-free and dry in winter.

Is it endangered?

Not yet, according to the IUCN, which lists it as Near Threatened. But it is known from a single population, and in 2025 Montgomery Botanical Center warned that it was close to qualifying as Critically Endangered because of collecting.

Is it poisonous?

It must be assumed so. It has not been studied, but all parts of Cycas are poisonous, especially the seeds.

Further reading on Succulentes

Sources

Reference sites

Bibliography

  • Forster, P.I. (2001). Cycas cupida (Cycadaceae), a new species from central Queensland. Austrobaileya 6(1): 153–160. doi:10.5962/p.299661 [Original description: description, comparisons, key to series Cairnsianosae, habitat, conservation; full text consulted.]
  • Hill, K.D. (1996). A taxonomic revision of the genus Cycas (Cycadaceae) in Australia. Telopea 7(1): 1–64. doi:10.7751/telopea19963040 [Definition of series Cairnsianosae; revision of the Australian species; full text consulted.]
  • Forster, P.I. (1999). Six blue cycads of desire. In K.A.W. Williams, Native Plants of Queensland 4: 388–389. North Ipswich. [Cited by Forster (2001); not consulted.]
  • Forster, P. (2010). Cycas cupida. The IUCN Red List of Threatened Species 2010: e.T178881A7634086. doi:10.2305/IUCN.UK.2010-3.RLTS.T178881A7634086.en [First assessment, NT (D2), cited by The World List of Cycads; reference checked on Crossref, page not consulted.]
  • Bösenberg, J.D. (2023). Cycas cupida. The IUCN Red List of Threatened Species 2023: e.T178881A67341157. doi:10.2305/IUCN.UK.2023-1.RLTS.T178881A67341157.en [Current assessment; reference checked on Crossref, NT category relayed by GBIF; page not consulted (access blocked).]
  • Haynes, J.L. (2022). Etymological compendium of cycad names. Phytotaxa 550(1): 1–31. doi:10.11646/phytotaxa.550.1.1 [Etymology of the epithet; cited by The World List of Cycads, text not consulted.]
  • Calonje, M., Stevenson, D.W. & Osborne, R. (2026). The World List of Cycads, version 2026.08.15. Montgomery Botanical Center, Coral Gables. doi:10.5281/zenodo.21958524 [Reference checklist: accepted name, original publication, type, range, synonyms, IUCN status; consulted directly.]