Cycas furfuracea

Cycas furfuracea is a blue cycad from the Kimberley, in the far north of Western Australia, where it grows mainly on the rocky metasandstone slopes of the King Leopold Ranges. Described as early as 1918 by the botanist William Vincent Fitzgerald, this member of the genus Cycas is recognised by its strongly keeled, bluish leaves covered in greyish-white down, which gave it its Latin name, meaning “scurfy” or “bran-covered”. Long reduced to a variety of Cycas media (Cycas media var. furfuracea), it is now recognised as a species in its own right. It is not considered threatened, but it is very rare in cultivation.

Key facts about Cycas furfuracea

  • Accepted name: Cycas furfuracea W.Fitzg. (1918), accepted by The World List of Cycads (version 2026.08.15) and by the Flora of Australia; POWO could not be consulted directly
  • Former names and synonyms: Cycas media var. furfuracea (W.Fitzg.) J.Schust. (1932)
  • Family: Cycadaceae, order Cycadales
  • Common names: no English common name attested
  • Natural range: Western Australia, Kimberley region (King Leopold Ranges, around Kimbolton and on islands to the north)
  • IUCN status: Least Concern (LC), assessment published in 2022, confirmed by the Red List data relayed by GBIF
  • CITES and other protection: CITES Appendix II (seeds exempt under annotation #4); Annex B in the European Union
  • Documented hardiness: no data (see Cold hardiness)
  • Light and soil: shallow, skeletal sandy soils over hard siliceous metasandstone, often on slopes; also red clay on basalt outcrops
  • Habit and adult size: trunk usually up to 1.5 m (rarely 2.5 m, up to 4 m according to the Flora of Australia), 18 to 22 cm across; leaves 80 to 150 cm long
  • In the UK, US and Australia: declared in BGCI by two Australian gardens (Bundaberg, Kings Park in Perth); no British or American garden record found
  • Toxicity: no data for the species; treat it as poisonous, like all Cycas (see Toxicity and precautions)

How to recognise Cycas furfuracea

Cycas furfuracea is identified by its bluish, strongly keeled leaves: the leaflets on either side of the rachis rise in a V, with an angle of only 40 to 70° between them. They are broad for an Australian cycad, often covered in white down and a blue bloom, and the leaves always end in a pair of leaflets. Towards the base the leaflets become gradually smaller until they turn into spines on a short petiole. Description after Hill (1996) and the Flora of Australia:

  • Trunk: up to 1.5 m, rarely 2.5 m, and 18 to 22 cm across; the Flora of Australia gives “to 2 (–4) m”.
  • Leaves: 80 to 150 cm long, blue and dull, strongly keeled, with 100 to 220 leaflets; petiole 15 to 26 cm, with loose white down, spiny over 5 to 50% of its length (often with only two or three spines, near the leaflets).
  • Median leaflets: 7 to 20 cm long and 6.5 to 7.5 mm wide, narrowed to 4.5 to 6 mm at the base, inserted at 40 to 50° to the rachis and 9 to 13 mm apart; grey-white down, mainly below; margins slightly recurved; midrib raised above and more prominent below.
  • New growth: densely covered in grey-white hairs.
  • Cataphylls (the scale leaves protecting the crown): narrowly triangular, soft, 4 to 8 cm long, with white and pale orange-brown down.
  • Male cones: narrowly ovoid to spindle-shaped, 30 to 40 cm long and 7 to 9 cm across, orange to brown; apical spine of the microsporophylls fine, sharply upturned, 6 to 12 mm long.
  • Megasporophylls (the fertile leaves of female plants): 26 to 36 cm long, with grey and pale orange-brown down, carrying 4 to 8 ovules; blade narrowly triangular, 70 to 95 mm by 10 to 22 mm, regularly toothed (12 to 20 teeth of 2 to 5 mm); apical spine 25 to 65 mm.
  • Seeds: flattened-ovoid, 32 to 36 mm by 27 to 32 mm, green then yellow, with a bloom; fleshy coat 2 to 3 mm thick.

Hill notes that rare individuals lack the blue wax of the leaves, so that a few green plants grow among blue stands. Plants from the west of the range, around Kimbolton, lose their down as the leaves mature and tend to have slightly broader leaflets, whereas the down may persist for several years in the King Leopold Ranges; the two forms overlap too much to be separated.

Hybrids

No natural or cultivated hybrid is documented for this species.

Possible confusion

The two closest species also grow in the Kimberley and form, with Cycas furfuracea, Hill’s series Furfuraceosae (1996). A third Kimberley species can also be mistaken for it:

  • Cycas basaltica, from the northern Kimberley, on basalt: flat leaves (leaflets opposite at 180°), leaflets inserted almost at right angles, with white down but no blue bloom.
  • Cycas pruinosa, from the east and south of the Kimberley: much narrower leaflets (2.5 to 4 mm), hairless, with strongly rolled margins, and megasporophylls with a very long sterile tip.
  • Cycas lane-poolei, from the north-west Kimberley: almost flat leaves, pale green to slightly bluish new growth, hairless leaflets with a midrib as prominent above as below, and very woolly, prickly cataphylls.

The name itself can mislead: most plants sold or discussed as “furfuracea” are the Mexican cardboard palm, Zamia furfuracea, a cycad of a quite different genus, family and continent. The two plants share only their epithet.

Taxonomy

Cycas furfuracea is a name accepted by The World List of Cycads and the Flora of Australia; POWO could not be consulted directly. William Vincent Fitzgerald described it in 1918 in his account of the flora of the Kimberley (Journal and Proceedings of the Royal Society of Western Australia 3: 108). The German botanist Robert Pilger ignored all the cycads described from this region in 1926, and in 1932 Julius Schuster made it a variety of Cycas media, the cycad of Queensland, in a treatment that Hill considers often meaningless.

John Maconochie recognised it as distinct again in 1980, and Ken Hill reinstated it as a species in his revision of the Australian Cycas (Telopea, 1996), where he placed it in a new series, Furfuraceosae, restricted to the Kimberley, with Cycas basaltica and Cycas pruinosa. These Australian series belong to subsection Endemicae of section Cycas (Lindström et al. 2009). De Laubenfels and Adema (1998) also accept it as a species. The name has therefore not changed; only its rank has varied.

Etymology and history

The epithet comes from the Latin furfuraceus, “scurfy, covered with bran”, a reference to the hairs that persist on the leaves (Haynes 2022, as cited by The World List of Cycads).

Fitzgerald cited his collections from “the summits of Mounts Herbert, Broome and Bold Bluff” without designating a type. The only specimen kept, which he collected in May 1905 on the summit of Mount Herbert (Fitzgerald 793), is divided between Sydney (NSW) and Perth (PERTH); it combines a leaf with male and female sporophylls, and so comes from several plants. In 1996 Hill chose the portion of leaf kept in Sydney as the lectotype, because the leaf is the most distinctive character of the species and this portion shows the petiole and basal leaflets described in the original publication. No history of introduction into cultivation is documented.

Common names

No common name is recorded for this species, in English or French, in the sources consulted (the Flora of Australia and The World List of Cycads). No Aboriginal name is recorded there either. Searching for “furfuracea” in English mostly leads to the cardboard palm, Zamia furfuracea.

In the wild

Cycas furfuracea is a sporadic species of the Kimberley region of northern Western Australia. It is known mainly from the higher parts of the King Leopold Ranges (Mount Herbert, Bold Bluff, Brownrigg Gorge), with a separate area around Kimbolton, further west, and on islands to the north, such as Heywood Island in the Bonaparte Archipelago. According to the Flora of Australia, it forms locally abundant stands in the King Leopold Ranges, in shallow to skeletal sandy soil over hard siliceous metasandstone, often on slopes. Around Kimbolton it grows both on that substrate and in red clay on rocky basalt outcrops.

Its pollinator, phenology and seed dispersers are not documented in the sources consulted. GBIF holds 94 records under this name (consulted on 21 October 2026), almost all herbarium specimens, most of them from Western Australia, collected between 1905 and 2007.

Conservation status and regulation

Cycas furfuracea is listed as Least Concern (LC) by the IUCN, in the assessment by John Donald Bösenberg published in version 2022-1 of the Red List; the Red List data relayed by GBIF confirm the category (consulted on 21 October 2026). An earlier assessment, by Ken Hill, dates from 2010. The Red List itself could not be consulted. Hill (1996) reported no particular threat to the species, whose range is remote and sparsely populated.

Like every species in the genus except Cycas beddomei, Cycas furfuracea 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 exempt, 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 (search of 3 October 2026). This general information does not replace the official texts: check the rules in force before buying or exchanging plants, ask the seller for proof of origin and prefer plants raised from cultivated seed.

Growing Cycas furfuracea

In short: no growing advice specific to Cycas furfuracea has been published, and the French nurseryman Simon Lavaud (Cycadales.eu, 2021) ranks it among the “very difficult” Australian Cycas, describing it as extremely rare in cultivation. Its natural setting, rocky, very free-draining slopes under a tropical climate with a long dry season, points to a plant that needs heat, sun and a mineral, fast-draining substrate.

Outdoor and in-ground cultivation

Planting in the open ground is only realistic in frost-free tropical climates. Simon Lavaud illustrates the species with a healthy specimen photographed in 2019 at Nong Nooch Tropical Garden, at Sattahip in Thailand, a garden where, he notes, the Australian Cycas thrive in an almost constant climate of 25 to 30 °C (77 to 86 °F). In its native Kimberley, the Flora of Australia describes it on shallow, skeletal sandy soils; this suggests full sun and perfect drainage, a deduction from its habitat rather than a growing result.

Container cultivation

In temperate climates it is a plant for a pot in a glasshouse. Simon Lavaud’s general advice for the Australian Cycas, not specific to this species, is a very mineral substrate (even pure pumice), the brightest possible position, a glasshouse to lengthen the short growing season, and generous, frequent watering when nights reach 18 to 20 °C (64 to 68 °F) and days 30 °C (86 °F); watering should be reduced when temperatures drop below 20 °C (68 °F) and can be stopped when nights fall below 10 °C (50 °F), because watering in cool weather exposes these cycads to a high risk of root rot. No growing report specific to Cycas furfuracea was found on the French forum Fous de palmiers or the Italian forum Tropicamente, where searches for the epithet lead only to Zamia furfuracea.

In cultivation in the UK, US and Australia

BGCI PlantSearch lists three gardens declaring the species (search of 21 October 2026): two in Australia, Bundaberg Botanic Gardens (Queensland) and Kings Park and Botanic Garden (Perth, Western Australia), and Fairy Lake Botanical Garden in Shenzhen, China. A BGCI entry shows that a garden has declared the species at some point, not that the plant is alive today. No record was found in the online catalogue of Montgomery Botanical Center (Florida), nor in the inventory of cycads in British, American and Australian gardens compiled for this site from the online catalogues of the Royal Botanic Garden Sydney, the Australian Botanic Garden Mount Annan and other gardens (19 October 2026); no British garden declares it. GBIF also holds a herbarium specimen in the New York Botanical Garden collected in Florida in 2007, without locality; since the species is wild only in Western Australia, it presumably came from a cultivated plant, which could not be checked. No report from an English-speaking grower could be read; PalmTalk and Dave’s Garden could not be consulted.

Propagation

The plant is dioecious: a male and a female plant are needed to obtain seed. No germination data specific to the species have been published. Seeds are exempt from CITES under annotation #4; ask for seed from cultivated plants.

Pests and diseases

No pest or disease specific to the species is documented. Cycad scales, including the Asian cycad scale, Aulacaspis yasumatsui, can affect all cultivated species, and stagnant moisture encourages root rot in cycads from dry climates; Simon Lavaud reports this risk for the Australian Cycas watered in cool weather.

Cold hardiness

No cold-tolerance data exist for Cycas furfuracea. The Kimberley has a frost-free tropical climate, and nothing allows us to say that the plant tolerates frost.

Mediterranean experience

No growing result has been published in Europe, in the open ground or in a pot, and no dated frost event concerns the species. Searches of the French forum Fous de palmiers and the Italian forum Tropicamente found no cold report, and the Jardin zoologique tropical at La Londe-les-Maures, in the south of France, has published no observation on this species. According to Simon Lavaud, the Australian Cycas grow slowly in Europe because the heat they need is rarely reached for more than three months a year. This suggests that Mediterranean climates, such as those of coastal California or southern Australia, are unlikely to suit it outdoors; this is a deduction, not a tested result.

United Kingdom, United States and Australia

No cold reading or dated growing report was found, either on forums or from botanic gardens. No USDA zone can be given. In the UK and in most of the United States and southern Australia, keep it frost-free under glass; outdoors, it can only be considered in tropical climates.

Toxicity and precautions

No toxicity analysis specific to Cycas furfuracea 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. The ASPCA lists the sago palm (Cycas revoluta) as poisonous to dogs, cats and horses. Until proven otherwise, treat the plant as poisonous: keep seeds and leaves out of reach of children and pets, and wear gloves to clean the seeds. If any part is swallowed, contact a poison centre, a doctor or a vet straight away.

Traditional uses

No use is documented for this species in the sources consulted.

Frequently asked questions

What does furfuracea mean?

“Scurfy” or “bran-covered” in Latin: the name describes the greyish-white down on the leaves, especially on the underside of the leaflets.

Is it the same plant as the cardboard palm?

No. The cardboard palm is Zamia furfuracea, a Mexican cycad of another family. Cycas furfuracea is an Australian species; the two share only their epithet.

Is it a variety of Cycas media?

No. Schuster treated it as a variety of Cycas media in 1932, but Hill reinstated it as a species in 1996, and current checklists follow him.

How can it be told from Cycas basaltica?

By its strongly keeled, bluish leaves; Cycas basaltica has flat, green leaves with leaflets almost at right angles to the rachis, and grows on basalt.

Is it endangered?

No. The IUCN has listed it as Least Concern since 2022.

Is it hardy?

Almost certainly not. No cold data exist; it is a tropical plant from a frost-free climate, and a specialist nurseryman classes it among the most difficult Australian cycads in cultivation.

Is it poisonous?

It must be assumed so. No analysis exists for the species, but all the cycads studied contain serious toxins, especially in the seeds.

Further reading on Succulentes

Sources

Reference sites

Bibliography

  • Fitzgerald, W.V. (1918). The botany of the Kimberleys, north-west Australia. Journal and Proceedings of the Royal Society of Western Australia 3: 102–224. [Original description (p. 108); not consulted directly, cited after Hill (1996) and The World List of Cycads.]
  • Hill, K.D. (1996). A taxonomic revision of the genus Cycas (Cycadaceae) in Australia. Telopea 7(1): 1–64. doi:10.7751/telopea19963040 [Description, typification, range, series Furfuraceosae (pp. 55–58); reference revision for Australia; full text consulted.]
  • Hill, K.D. (1998). Cycadaceae. In: McCarthy, P.M. (ed.), Flora of Australia 48: 597–635. CSIRO Publishing, Melbourne. [Consulted in its updated online version (profiles.ala.org.au).]
  • Lindström, A.J., Hill, K.D. & Stanberg, L.C. (2009). The genus Cycas (Cycadaceae) in Indonesia. Telopea 12(3): 385–418. doi:10.7751/telopea20095826 [Definition of subsection Endemicae; full text consulted.]
  • Laubenfels, D.J. de & Adema, F. (1998). A taxonomic revision of the genera Cycas and Epicycas gen. nov. (Cycadaceae). Blumea 43(2): 351–400. [Very broad species concepts; not consulted directly, cited after The World List of Cycads and the Flora of Australia.]
  • Bösenberg, J.D. (2022). Cycas furfuracea. The IUCN Red List of Threatened Species 2022-1: e.T41990A68901566. doi:10.2305/IUCN.UK.2022-1.RLTS.T41990A68901566.en [Current assessment (LC); reference checked on Crossref, category relayed by GBIF; Red List page not consulted (access blocked).]
  • Hill, K.D. (2010). Cycas furfuracea. The IUCN Red List of Threatened Species 2010-3: e.T41990A10596784. doi:10.2305/IUCN.UK.2010-3.RLTS.T41990A10596784.en [Previous assessment; reference checked on Crossref, category not read.]
  • Haynes, J.L. (2022). Etymological compendium of cycad names. Phytotaxa 550(1): 1–31. doi:10.11646/phytotaxa.550.1.1 [Source of the etymologies given by The World List of Cycads; not consulted directly.]
  • 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; consulted directly.]