Cycas panzhihuaensis

Cycas panzhihuaensis is the cycad of Sichuan: it grows in the hot, dry valleys of the Jinsha, the upper Yangtze, between 1,100 and 2,000 m. Within the genus Cycas it is recognised by its flat, upright leaves, its narrow, bluish leaflets and its small orange-red seeds. The only species in its section, it is also the cycad whose complete genome was published in 2022. It is listed as Vulnerable and protected by a national nature reserve that holds about 390,000 plants. Described in 1981, it absorbed Cycas baguanheensis, described in the same paper and now a synonym. It is one of the most sought-after cycads for planting out in cool climates: at the Jardin zoologique tropical, on the Mediterranean coast of France, it came through −6 °C (21 °F) and snow in 2012 without damage.

Key facts about Cycas panzhihuaensis

  • Accepted name: Cycas panzhihuaensis L.Zhou & S.Y.Yang (1981), accepted by The World List of Cycads (version 2026.08.15), Hill (2008) and the Flora of China; the World Checklist of Vascular Plants (WCVP), on which POWO is based, also accepts it (consulted through GBIF on 31 October 2026)
  • Synonym: Cycas baguanheensis L.K.Fu & S.Z.Cheng (1981); common misspellings: “panzhihuanensis”, “panzihuaensis”
  • Family: Cycadaceae, order Cycadales; the only species of section Panzhihuaenses (Hill 2008)
  • Common names: no traditional English name; in Chinese pan-zhi-hua su-tie (“Panzhihua cycad”) and e-bao-gong; “hardy sago” is a nursery trade name (see Common names)
  • Natural range: China, southern Sichuan and northern Yunnan, dry valleys of the Jinsha and its tributaries; seven known localities
  • IUCN status: Vulnerable (VU B1ab(iii,v)), assessment by J. D. Bösenberg published in 2023
  • CITES and other protection: CITES Appendix II; Annex B in the European Union; first-class state protection in China; a national nature reserve at Panzhihua
  • Documented hardiness: −6 °C (21 °F) and snow without damage at the Jardin zoologique tropical (south of France); foliage intact at −8 to −9 °C (17.6 to 15.8 °F) in several French gardens, sometimes under fleece; defoliation at around −10 to −12 °C (14 to 10.4 °F) with regrowth in spring; survived about −16 to −13 °C (4 to 9 °F) unprotected in North Carolina (see Cold hardiness)
  • Light and soil: in the wild, dry slopes on limestone or shale; in cultivation, full sun and a very free-draining mineral soil
  • Habit and adult size: trunk 1 to 2 m (rarely 3 m) tall and 15 to 30 cm across; 30 to 80 leaves 0.7 to 1.5 m long
  • In the UK, US and Australia: Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh and RHS Garden Wisley (BGCI); Montgomery Botanical Center (34 accessions, 1992 to 2026), Juniper Level Botanic Garden (in the ground, North Carolina) and some twenty-five gardens in BGCI; Royal Botanic Gardens Victoria (outdoor beds in Melbourne), Royal Botanic Garden Sydney and Adelaide
  • Toxicity: no analysis specific to the species; treat it as poisonous, like all Cycas (see Toxicity and precautions)

How to recognise Cycas panzhihuaensis

For Ken Hill (2008) it is one of the easiest Chinese cycads to recognise: its leaves are flat, not keeled, and held upright, its narrow leaflets are a dull blue, and its seeds are small and orange-red.

Hill (2008) describes a trunk 1 to 2 m tall, rarely 3 m, 15 to 20 cm thick, carrying 30 to 80 leaves. The leaves, bluish and semi-glossy, are 70 to 150 cm long; they are flat, the two rows of leaflets being inserted at 180° on the rachis, and carry 140 to 250 leaflets, with a persistent orange down on the underside. The petiole is 7 to 25 cm long and spiny along half to two-thirds of its length. The median leaflets measure 12 to 23 cm by 5 to 7 mm, with flat or slightly recurved margins. The male cones, spindle-shaped and yellow, measure 25 to 50 cm by 8 to 14 cm. The megasporophylls, 11 to 21 cm long and covered in yellow or brown down, carry 1 to 5 hairless ovules and a rounded blade deeply cut into 23 to 40 soft lobes. The seeds, almost round, measure 25 to 35 mm by 22 to 30 mm, with a red to orange fleshy coat.

The Flora of China (1999) gives a trunk up to 2 m, rarely 3 m, by 25 to 30 cm, 30 to 60 leaves (rarely 80) of 0.7 to 1.3 m, with 70 to 120 pairs of leaflets 12 to 20 cm by 6 to 7 mm, and 2 to 4 bright orange-red seeds per megasporophyll. The foliage can look more or less blue: an Italian grower describes his five- or six-year-old seedlings as dark green with metallic glints, very different from Cycas revoluta (Tropicamente forum, 2012).

Cycas panzhihuaensis
Male plant of Cycas panzhihuaensis
Cycas panzhihuaensis
Female plant of Cycas panzhihuaensis

Hill (2008) gives a trunk of 1 to 2 m, rarely 3 m.

Hybrids

Hybrids do circulate in cultivation. Juniper Level Botanic Garden, in North Carolina, grows Cycas taitungensis × panzhihuaensis and Cycas panzhihuaensis × (revoluta × taitungensis) in the ground; they survived winter 2013–2014 without protection. Other crosses are offered in the trade, but none could be checked in a reliable source. A plant sold as Cycas panzhihuaensis may therefore be a hybrid, which may explain some contradictory growing results.

Possible confusion

Names and spellings

Cycas baguanheensis, described in the same paper as Cycas panzhihuaensis in 1981, has since been regarded as a stunted form of the same species from a harsher site (Hill 2008). In their revision of the genus, de Laubenfels and Adema (1998) placed the species, under the spelling “panzhihuanensis”, in Cycas immersa, a species from Thailand; neither Hill (2008), nor the Flora of China, nor The World List of Cycads has followed them. In the trade and on forums, the species often appears as “panzihuaensis”.

Telling it from related species

  • Cycas revoluta: clearly keeled, dark green leaves, leaflets with rolled margins, downy ovules, trunk woolly at the top (Hill 2008).
  • Cycas taitungensis: keeled, longer leaves, leaflets with recurved margins, downy ovules and larger red seeds (Hill 2008).

Taxonomy

Cycas panzhihuaensis was described in 1981 by L. Zhou and S.Y. Yang in Acta Phytotaxonomica Sinica 19(3). The type, Yang Siyuan 10, was collected at Baguan He, near Dukou, today the city of Panzhihua (Sichuan), and the holotype is kept at the herbarium of the Institute of Botany in Beijing (PE) (The World List of Cycads; Hill 2008). The protologue could not be consulted.

Hill (2008) created section Panzhihuaenses for it, based on a subgenus of Wang (1996, according to Hill 2008), of which it is the only species. The section is defined by firm, waxy male cones, comb-like megasporophylls, hairless ovules and red to orange seeds with a smooth coat; it shares deeply sunken stomata with section Asiorientales, that of Cycas revoluta. Zheng and colleagues (2017) keep the same arrangement.

In 2022 a Chinese team published the complete genome of Cycas panzhihuaensis, a reference genome of 10.5 billion bases, together with the transcriptomes of 339 cycad species. They located the region of the Y chromosome specific to male plants, which contains a gene expressed only in male cones, and genes probably acquired from fungi that protect the plant against herbivores (Liu and colleagues 2022). The Missouri Botanical Garden notes that this discovery could eventually allow the sex of cycads to be determined in the field without cones (Deloso and colleagues 2025).

Etymology and history

The epithet comes from the prefecture of Panzhihua, in southern Sichuan, with the Latin suffix -ensis, “originating from” (Hill 2008; Haynes 2022, through The World List of Cycads).

According to Hill (2008), the plants were collected in 1979 near Dukou by Si-Yuan Yang and Bin Wu, then described in 1981 by L. Zhou and S.Y. Yang. In the same paper, the botanists L.K. Fu and S.Z. Cheng described Cycas baguanheensis from collections made on the same expedition. Hill (2008) considers it probably the most abundant of the Chinese cycads, although it was described late. According to the article on its cultivation at the Jardin zoologique tropical, published in French on this site, seed was offered in Europe by a few seed merchants from the end of the 1990s and the early 2000s.

Common names

There is no traditional English name. In Chinese, the Flora of China gives pan-zhi-hua su-tie (攀枝花苏铁, “Panzhihua cycad”); Hill (2008) and Species+ also cite e-bao-gong and e-boa-chi. The British nursery Trebrown lists it as “hardy sago”, with “Doukou sago” as an alternative; these are trade names.

In the wild

Cycas panzhihuaensis lives in southern Sichuan and northern Yunnan, in the dry valley of the Jinsha and its tributaries, the Yalong and the Anning (Yang and colleagues 2026). The Flora of China places it in grassy places and sparse thickets, on limestone and sandy shale, between 1,100 and 2,000 m; Hill (2008) describes low dry woodland or thickets, on moderate to steep slopes, mostly on limestone soils, sometimes on shale or sandstone. Xiao and colleagues (2020) record seven localities.

Habitat models show how narrow its range is. Yang and colleagues (2026) estimate the highly suitable habitat at about 799 km², concentrated in the dry-hot valleys of the Jinsha, Yalong and Anning, and find that land-surface temperature in January is the factor that best explains its distribution. Ding and colleagues (2025) consider that only 18% of the Hengduan Mountains region they studied offers suitable habitat, highly fragmented and shifting south and south-east with climate change.

According to the Flora of China, pollination takes place in April and May, and the seeds ripen in September and October. The Panzhihua national nature reserve protects more than 389,000 plants, a wild cycad forest that the IUCN describes as the most northerly, the highest and the most extensive on the Eurasian continent (IUCN 2025).

Conservation status and regulation

The IUCN lists Cycas panzhihuaensis as Vulnerable (VU B1ab(iii,v)), in the assessment by J. D. Bösenberg published in 2023: the range is small and fragmented, with a continuing decline in the quality of the habitat and in the number of mature plants (category confirmed by GBIF and The World List of Cycads). According to the IUCN, this listing marks an improvement, the species having previously been considered Endangered (IUCN 2025). The previous assessment was that of K. D. Hill (2010). The Red List record of the species has the number 42078.

Hill (2008) cited clearing for firewood and farming, and the collection of plants for sale as food, medicine or ornamentals, even inside reserves. Xiao and colleagues (2020) identify human activity as the main threat and stress that the small populations outside reserves, the most exposed, are also the richest in genetic diversity. Ding and colleagues (2025) estimate that the priority areas for its conservation overlap existing protected areas by only about 6%.

The species is protected by the Panzhihua national nature reserve, China’s only national reserve dedicated to cycads, which joined the IUCN Green List of protected areas in December 2025, and by several provincial or local reserves in Sichuan (Liangshan) and Yunnan (Mount Jiaozi, Luquan, Yuanmou). Zheng and colleagues (2017) consider the populations in the reserves healthy, but that of Luquan in decline, and note that it is the only cycad whose seeds are stored in the Germplasm Bank of Wild Species in Kunming.

In China, all Cycas species are in the first class of the 2021 national list of protected wild plants. Like the whole family Cycadaceae, the species has been listed in CITES Appendix II since 4 February 1977, with annotation #4 (CoP20 version, in force since 5 March 2026): seeds, pollen and seedlings in sterile containers are not covered by CITES. In the European Union it falls under Annex B of Regulation (EC) No 338/97 (annexes set by Regulation (EU) 2026/1383, applicable since 29 June 2026). Databases consulted on 19 October 2026: check the regulations in force before any purchase and prefer plants raised from seed in cultivation.

Growing Cycas panzhihuaensis

Cycas panzhihuaensis is grown outdoors in a range of climates, from the Mediterranean coast of France to North Carolina. It wants full sun, a mineral, very free-draining soil and some water in summer; leaves formed under glass are its weak point when plants are moved outside.

Outdoor and in-ground cultivation

At the Jardin zoologique tropical at La Londe-les-Maures, on the Mediterranean coast of the Var in the south of France, several plants grow in the ground in the same spot, sunny all year round and very hot in summer. The soil is a bank of crushed schist, very free-draining, topped with pozzolana (volcanic gravel) to make weeding easier: the species does well there, in conditions that also suit succulents and other dry-climate plants. Because rain in the Var falls mostly in winter, whereas in its homeland it falls mostly in summer, the plants are watered once or twice a week in summer. The article published by the site reviews some fifteen years of cultivation. This Mediterranean experience may help growers in comparable climates, such as coastal California or southern Australia, without giving an exact equivalent for any particular place.

Leaves formed in a glasshouse cope badly with the move outdoors. At the Jardin zoologique tropical, these were the only significant damage seen; once new leaves had formed outside, there was no more. In Roussillon, in southern France, a grower reports on the Fous de palmiers forum that leaves formed under glass were stripped or snapped off at the trunk by the tramontane wind in February 2012, and that its leaves resist wind less well than those of Cycas revoluta, with petioles broken in violent wind (September 2012).

Growth is judged variable. A grower in the Tarn (south-west France) finds it faster than Cycas revoluta (2013), another near Aix-en-Provence finds no difference (2018). The Roussillon grower links a possible second flush of leaves to temperatures staying above 28 °C (82.4 °F) (2012); an Italian grower saw one in August 2009 (Tropicamente forum). Young plants remain slow: an Italian grower describes five-year-old seedlings with a bulb 4 to 5 cm across (2009).

In North America, Juniper Level Botanic Garden, near Raleigh (North Carolina), grows its plants in the ground without protection or mulch (see Cold hardiness). The British nursery Trebrown states that the species “can be grown outdoors in the UK” and calls it “the most cold hardy of all cycads”; no dated growing result from a British garden has been published to back this up.

Container cultivation

In a pot, the roots lack the thermal inertia of the ground and freeze sooner. On Vancouver Island (British Columbia, Canada), a grower reports on the UBC Botanical Garden forums that his Cycas panzhihuaensis in one-US-gallon pots (about 3.8 litres) came through −10 °C (14 °F) on a night in January 2004. In Ravenna (Emilia-Romagna, Italy), by contrast, a grower lost a plant kept in a pot outdoors, sheltered from rain, after snow, hoar frost and −7 °C (19.4 °F) in winter 2009–2010 (Tropicamente forum). Where winters regularly fall below these values, bring pots into a cold, bright, frost-free place.

In cultivation in the UK, US and Australia

Cycas panzhihuaensis is one of the most widely held Cycas in public collections in the three countries. A garden listed in the BGCI PlantSearch database (consulted in October 2026) has declared the species at some point, which does not prove that a living plant is there today.

  • United States: the online catalogue of Montgomery Botanical Center (Coral Gables, Florida) lists 34 accessions, which their numbers date to 1992 (1), 1993 (22), 1994 (10) and 2026 (1). Juniper Level Botanic Garden (North Carolina) grows it in the ground, with its hybrids (2014–2022). BGCI PlantSearch adds some twenty-five gardens, among them The Huntington, Ganna Walska Lotusland, San Diego Botanic Garden, the San Diego Zoo, the Missouri Botanical Garden, Fairchild Tropical Botanic Garden, the United States Botanic Garden, Brooklyn Botanic Garden, Descanso Gardens, the Gardens of Golden Gate Park, Sonoma Botanical Garden, Moore Farms Botanical Garden (South Carolina), the State Botanical Garden of Georgia and Norfolk Botanical Garden (Virginia).
  • United Kingdom: the Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh and RHS Garden Wisley list the species in BGCI PlantSearch; no growing result from either garden has been published.
  • Australia: the census of the Royal Botanic Gardens Victoria places four plants of wild provenance (accession RBGM 940957) in outdoor beds at Melbourne Gardens, three in the Rockery Bed and one in the Sinojackia Bed, planted on 1 May 2015. The online catalogue of the Royal Botanic Garden Sydney (updated on 1 October 2026) lists accession S2021-0662 (three plants of garden origin) in bed 89b. The Botanic Garden of Adelaide lists it in BGCI PlantSearch.

Propagation

Cycas panzhihuaensis is propagated from seed; a male and a female plant are needed to obtain seed, which ripens in autumn. A grower in Ravenna lists it among the species whose seed germinated easily for him (Tropicamente forum, 2009), and another notes that only germination is quick (2009). No protocol specific to the species has been published.

Pests and diseases

No pest specific to the species is reported in cultivation. A Chinese study of 2016 identified fungi responsible for a stem rot in Cycas panzhihuaensis (text not consulted). In cultivation the risks are those of the genus: scale insects, including Aulacaspis yasumatsui, especially under glass, and rot in waterlogged soil.

Cold hardiness

Cycas panzhihuaensis is one of the most cold-tolerant cycads. Several French growers find its foliage more resistant to cold than that of Cycas revoluta, and the plant usually regrows after losing its leaves. In the laboratory, Wu and colleagues (2023) found it more tolerant of unexpected freezing than Cycas bifida, and Chinese researchers are studying its freezing tolerance with a view to introducing it further north (Yu and colleagues 2025).

A Mediterranean benchmark: the Jardin zoologique tropical

At the Jardin zoologique tropical at La Londe-les-Maures, on the Var coast, the plants in the ground were exposed to −6 °C (21 °F) and snow in January and February 2012, an exceptional episode for the area, and “took it perfectly”, according to the article published by the site. The only serious damage in some fifteen years concerned leaves formed under glass. For readers in coastal California, southern Australia or the mildest parts of southern England, this is a useful reference point, but not a direct equivalent of their own conditions.

Elsewhere in Europe

  • Near Aix-en-Provence (Provence, France), a grower reports on the Fous de palmiers forum (September 2018) that at −8 °C (17.6 °F) the leaves of Cycas revoluta were scorched, but not those of Cycas panzhihuaensis.
  • In the Gard (southern France), a grower shows in photographs (February 2012) his plant, exposed to the wind, intact after almost −9 °C (15.8 °F) with strong wind, while his Cycas revoluta, sheltered against the house, was damaged.
  • In Nantes (Loire-Atlantique, western France), a grower reports (February 2012) that his large plant and his seedlings stayed intact under winter fleece after −9 °C (15.8 °F) on two occasions, while his two Cycas revoluta, also under fleece, were damaged for the first time since 2004; he confirms in September 2013: −8 to −9 °C (17.6 to 15.8 °F) without damage under fleece, as an adult plant.
  • In La Varenne-Saint-Hilaire, south-east of Paris, a grower reports on the same forum that his plant, in the ground and almost unprotected, came through the −12 °C (10.4 °F) of winter 2008–2009 without trouble, and produced two flushes of leaves each summer (messages of December 2009).
  • In Lavaur (Tarn, south-west France), a grower reports (October 2013) slight scorching of the foliage at −6 °C (21.2 °F) in wet weather, on a plant in the ground for three years.
  • In the Béarn (south-west France), a grower shows his plant defoliated after −10 °C (14 °F) in February 2012; by May it had made 19 new leaves, after three years without a flush.
  • In the Lot (south-west France), a grower reports (May 2012) that his plant went through about −11 to −12 °C (12.2 to 10.4 °F) in February 2012; defoliated almost every winter, it regrows each time, and its bulb has grown from the size of a walnut to that of an apple in six or seven years.
  • In Sabaudia (Lazio, Italy), a grower reports on the Tropicamente forum (November 2011) that his plants had “no problem” with the −7 °C (19.4 °F) of the previous December; he gives neither the size of the plants nor any protection.
  • In Delémont (Jura, Switzerland), a grower reports on the Fous de palmiers forum (May 2015) that his plant, under a polycarbonate roof and fleece, had its leaves scorched at about −16 °C (3.2 °F), then made three new leaves in May.
  • In Poland, a grower lost his plant in 2011: it showed no visible damage after winter 2010–2011 but did not restart, although it had come through the previous winter (same forum, July 2011 and May 2012).

Not every attempt succeeds: according to a grower on the same forum, the plant at the Lyon botanical garden did not survive its first winter, 2011–2012, without details of the temperature or growing conditions (message of May 2012). Taken together, these reports suggest foliage that stays intact down to about −8 to −9 °C (17.6 to 15.8 °F) in good conditions, and defoliation followed by regrowth at around −10 to −12 °C (14 to 10.4 °F): this is a summary of isolated reports, not a measurement.

North America

Juniper Level Botanic Garden, near Raleigh (North Carolina), reports that after winter 2013–2014, with minima of 4 to 9 °F (about −16 to −13 °C) depending on the spot, its Cycas panzhihuaensis in the ground, without protection or mulch, survived while losing almost all their leaves. In 2022, all its cycads lost their leaves at 16 °F (about −9 °C), then regrew, still without protection. The garden adds that Cycas revoluta has not survived its winters. On Vancouver Island, potted plants came through −10 °C (14 °F) in January 2004 (see Container cultivation).

No source gives a USDA zone for the species based on trials. The British nursery Trebrown rates it USDA zone 9b, a commercial rating that sits oddly with its own claim that the plant can be grown outdoors in the UK and with the results above.

Toxicity and precautions

No toxicity data specific to Cycas panzhihuaensis have been published, but the risk is documented for the genus: in Cycas, all parts of the plant are poisonous and the seeds most of all. They contain cycasin, which is converted in the body into methylazoxymethanol, toxic to the liver and nervous system, along with a neurotoxic amino acid, BMAA (NC State Extension; ASPCA). The ASPCA lists the sago palm (Cycas revoluta) as toxic to dogs, cats and horses.

Treat the plant as poisonous: keep seeds out of reach of children and pets, wear gloves to handle them and, if any part is swallowed, contact a poison centre, a doctor or a vet straight away.

Traditional uses

According to Hill (2008), citing Walters and colleagues (1995), plants are collected in the wild to be sold as food, as medicine and as ornamentals. The published sources give neither the parts used nor their preparation; these uses are not recommendations, since the plant is poisonous.

Frequently asked questions

Is Cycas panzhihuaensis hardier than Cycas revoluta?

Its foliage seems to be: several French growers have seen it intact at −8 to −9 °C (17.6 to 15.8 °F) when that of Cycas revoluta was scorched. At Juniper Level Botanic Garden, in North Carolina, it survived about −16 to −13 °C (4 to 9 °F) without protection, whereas Cycas revoluta has not survived the garden’s winters.

Can it be grown outdoors in the UK?

Possibly, in the mildest, best-drained gardens, but this is not documented. A British nursery says it can, yet no dated result from a British garden has been published; the closest benchmarks are western France, where plants came through −9 °C (15.8 °F) under fleece, and the Mediterranean coast.

Can it be grown outdoors in the United States?

Yes, at least in the south-east: Juniper Level Botanic Garden, in North Carolina, grows it in the ground without protection, losing its leaves in the hardest winters. Many botanic gardens from California to Virginia list it, although their lists do not say whether the plants are outdoors.

Why did the leaves of my glasshouse-raised plant get damaged?

Leaves formed under glass cope badly with outdoor conditions: at the Jardin zoologique tropical, as in Roussillon, these were the leaves that suffered. The following leaves, formed outdoors, are more resistant.

What soil does it need?

A mineral, very free-draining soil: at the Jardin zoologique tropical, crushed schist topped with pozzolana. In the wild it grows on dry slopes, mostly on limestone.

Is it endangered?

It is listed as Vulnerable (2023), but its situation has improved according to the IUCN: the Panzhihua reserve alone protects more than 389,000 plants.

Is it poisonous?

It should be assumed to be. It has not been analysed, but all Cycas studied contain serious toxins, especially in the seeds.

Further reading on Succulentes

Sources

Reference sites

Bibliography

  • Zhou, L., Yang, S.Y. et al. (1981). [Description of Cycas panzhihuaensis and Cycas baguanheensis.] Acta Phytotaxonomica Sinica 19(3): 335–337. [Protologue; reference taken from The World List of Cycads and Hill 2008.]
  • Laubenfels, D.J. de & Adema, F. (1998). A taxonomic revision of the genera Cycas and Epicycas gen. nov. (Cycadaceae). Blumea 43(2): 351–400. [Species placed under Cycas immersa.]
  • Chen, C.J. & Stevenson, D.W. (1999). Cycadaceae. In: Wu, Z.Y. & Raven, P.H. (eds), Flora of China 4. Science Press, Beijing, and Missouri Botanical Garden Press, St Louis. [Description, habitat, altitude, phenology; online version.]
  • Hill, K.D. (2008). The genus Cycas (Cycadaceae) in China. Telopea 12(1): 71–118. doi:10.7751/telopea20085804 [Section Panzhihuaenses, description, type, history, habitat, threats, vernacular names.]
  • Zheng, Y., Liu, J., Feng, X. & Gong, X. (2017). The distribution, diversity, and conservation status of Cycas in China. Ecology and Evolution 7(9): 3212–3224. doi:10.1002/ece3.2910 [Reserves, state of populations, seed bank.]
  • Xiao, S., Ji, Y., Liu, J. & Gong, X. (2020). Genetic characterization of the entire range of Cycas panzhihuaensis (Cycadaceae). Plant Diversity 42(1): 7–18. doi:10.1016/j.pld.2019.10.001 [Seven localities, genetic diversity, threats.]
  • Liu, Y., Wang, S., Li, L. et al. (2022). The Cycas genome and the early evolution of seed plants. Nature Plants 8: 389–401. doi:10.1038/s41477-022-01129-7 [Reference genome of Cycas panzhihuaensis.]
  • Wu, Y., Zhu, H., Ling, Z., Lu, E., Peng, X. & Zheng, Y. (2023). The metabolism of nonstructural carbohydrates, lipids, and energy in two Cycas species with differential tolerance to unexpected freezing stress. Frontiers in Plant Science 14: 1301560. doi:10.3389/fpls.2023.1301560 [Freezing tolerance compared with Cycas bifida.]
  • Ding, Y., Yang, Y., Peng, X. et al. (2025). Habitat suitability and driving factors of Cycas panzhihuaensis in the Hengduan Mountains. Plants 14: 2797. doi:10.3390/plants14172797 [Fragmented habitat (18.36% of the region), overlap of 6.17% with protected areas; consulted on 21 October 2026.]
  • Yu, J., Zhou, Y., Xu, C., Wang, F. & Zheng, Y. (2025). Transcriptome analysis reveals plant hormone signal transduction mechanisms underlying freezing stress responses in Cycas panzhihuaensis. BMC Plant Biology 26: 66. doi:10.1186/s12870-025-07907-7 [Freezing tolerance, introduction further north.]
  • Yang, Y., Ding, Y., Peng, X. et al. (2026). Integrating habitat suitability and quality assessments to identify conservation priorities for Cycas panzhihuaensis. Plants 15: 670. doi:10.3390/plants15040670 [Highly suitable habitat of 799.12 km² in the valleys of the Jinsha, Yalong and Anning, role of January temperature; consulted on 21 October 2026.]
  • Deloso, B.E., Colligan, A., Sucher, R. & Ramirez, V. (2025). Missouri Botanical Garden’s cycad collection: a journey through time. Plant Species Biology. doi:10.1111/1442-1984.12509 [Significance of the Cycas panzhihuaensis genome for sexing cycads.]
  • Isolation and identification of the pathogens causing Cycas panzhihuaensis stem rot disease (2016). International Journal of Science and Research 5(3). doi:10.21275/v5i3.nov162235 [Stem rot; title checked on Crossref.]
  • Hill, K.D. (2010). Cycas panzhihuaensis. The IUCN Red List of Threatened Species 2010: e.T42078A10621423. doi:10.2305/IUCN.UK.2010-3.RLTS.T42078A10621423.en [Previous assessment; reference checked on Crossref.]
  • Bösenberg, J.D. (2023). Cycas panzhihuaensis. The IUCN Red List of Threatened Species 2023: e.T42078A69154055. doi:10.2305/IUCN.UK.2023-1.RLTS.T42078A69154055.en [Current assessment (VU); reference checked on Crossref.]
  • Haynes, J.L. (2022). Etymological compendium of cycad names. Phytotaxa 550(1): 1–31. doi:10.11646/phytotaxa.550.1.1 [Etymology; used through The World List of Cycads.]
  • 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.]