Zamia muricata

Zamia muricata is a cycad of northern Venezuela, also found in an isolated range on the Guajira peninsula, in Colombia, where it grows in dry to humid forest from near sea level to 900 m. Described as early as 1806 from a collection by Alexander von Humboldt and Aimé Bonpland, this species of the genus Zamia was redefined in 2022, when the populations of the Colombian Llanos that had carried its name were described as Zamia orinoquiensis. The IUCN rates it Least Concern (2022 assessment).

Key facts about Zamia muricata

  • Accepted name: Zamia muricata Willd. (1806), accepted by The World List of Cycads (version 2026.08.15), by GBIF and by the World Checklist of Vascular Plants, on which POWO is based; POWO could not be consulted directly
  • Former names and synonyms: Palmifolium muricatum (Willd.) Kuntze; Zamia muricata var. angustifolia Miq.; Zamia gutierrezii Sauvalle; Zamia media var. gutierrezii (Sauvalle) J.Schust.
  • Family: Zamiaceae, order Cycadales
  • Common names: no English name; “acesiva” and “achichive” in Venezuela (Steyermark, 1994, quoted in 2022)
  • Natural range: Venezuela (Aragua, Carabobo, Falcón, Lara, Yaracuy), 10 to 900 m; Colombia (Serranía de Macuira, La Guajira), 550 to 700 m
  • IUCN status: Least Concern (LC), 2022 assessment; Near Threatened (NT) in 2010
  • CITES and other protection: CITES Appendix II (whole genus, since 1977; seeds exempt under annotation #4); Annex B in the European Union
  • Documented hardiness: a Californian nursery reports that it takes about 0 °C (32 °F); no measured record (see Cold hardiness)
  • Light and soil: very dry to humid tropical forest, with a marked dry season in Venezuela; cloud forest on hilltops in the Serranía de Macuira; filtered light in cultivation
  • Habit and adult size: underground stem up to 25 cm long and 12 cm across, often branched; 2 to 9 leaves 134 to 189 cm long (up to 2.5 m)
  • In the UK, US and Australia: Kew (UK); Montgomery Botanical Center, Fairchild, Marie Selby, Naples, Lotusland, San Diego Zoo and several gardens in Hawaii (US); Cairns (Australia)
  • Toxicity: no data specific to the species; treat it as poisonous, like all cycads (see Toxicity and precautions)

How to recognise Zamia muricata

It is a Zamia with an underground stem, many slender, slightly drooping leaflets toothed towards the tip, and female cones on a very long stalk. The redescription published in 2022 by Michael Calonje and colleagues gives:

  • Stem: underground, tuberous, solitary or more often branched in adults, up to 25 cm long and 12 cm in diameter.
  • Leaves: 2 to 9, upright to slightly spreading, 134 to 189 cm long; petiole 57 to 92 cm, armed along its whole length with prickles 1 to 2 mm long, hence the name of the species.
  • Leaflets: 15 to 54, papery, light green (sometimes reddish brown) when they emerge, then dark green, oblong-lanceolate to lanceolate, with a pointed to long-tapering tip; 20 to 45 teeth confined to the upper third or quarter; median leaflets 21 to 32 cm long and 2 to 4 cm wide.
  • Seedlings: the first leaf carries four leaflets.
  • Male cones: 1 to 6 per stem, cylindrical, cream with a greenish tinge, 6.4 to 9.7 cm long and 1.3 to 1.8 cm across, on a peduncle 9 to 16 cm long; 12 to 18 pollen sacs per scale, in two separate groups.
  • Female cones: 1 or 2 per stem (up to 5 in cultivation), greyish brown with a green tinge, 7.6 to 22 cm long and 3.8 to 4.5 cm across, on a characteristic peduncle 12.4 to 27 cm long.
  • Seeds: ovoid, with a red fleshy coat, 14 to 17 mm long and 8 to 10 mm wide.

Jungle Music, a Californian nursery, adds an observation from its plants: juvenile leaflets are wider and become longer and thinner as the plant matures, and older plants often form clusters of several stems with several crowns of leaves, which makes them bushier and wider.

Hybrids

No hybrid, natural or raised in cultivation, is documented.

Possible confusion

Three Colombian species can be confused with Zamia muricata; the first was, for decades:

  • Zamia orinoquiensis, of the Colombian Llanos, long included in it: only 1 to 4 leaves, 6 to 22 stiff, leathery leaflets, two leaflets on the first seedling leaf, reddish-brown male cones with 23 to 36 pollen sacs per scale, and blackish female cones on a shorter peduncle;
  • Zamia huilensis, of the Eastern Cordillera (Huila, Colombia), with similarly shaped leaflets: an aerial trunk, yellowish-beige female cones on a short peduncle (2 to 5 cm) and 37 to 43 pollen sacs in a single group per scale (Calonje and colleagues, 2012);
  • Zamia melanorrhachis, of northern Colombia: only 4 to 10 pairs of leaflets and a dark purple to black petiole with minute prickles, whereas that of Zamia muricata is green and clearly armed (key of Calderón and Stevenson, 2003).

Taxonomy

Zamia muricata is an accepted name according to The World List of Cycads, GBIF and the World Checklist of Vascular Plants, on which POWO is based (read on GBIF, version of 4 June 2026); POWO itself could not be consulted. It was published in 1806 by the German botanist Carl Ludwig Willdenow in the fourth edition of Species Plantarum. In 1891 Otto Kuntze transferred it to the genus Palmifolium, a name he wanted to substitute for Zamia; this combination is no longer used.

Two names are now placed in its synonymy: Zamia muricata var. angustifolia, described by Miquel in 1842 from a garden plant (“ex Horto Spaarberg”), and Zamia gutierrezii, described by Sauvalle in 1868 from a collection attributed to the province of Pinar del Río, in Cuba. The World List of Cycads and the 2022 revision follow this synonymy without comment; Cuba is not included in the range of the species.

The 2022 redefinition. Dennis Stevenson (2001, 2004) had included in Zamia muricata the Colombian populations of the Serranía de Macuira and those at the foot of the Eastern Cordillera, on the Llanos side. The field and herbarium study by Calonje and colleagues showed that the latter form a distinct species, Zamia orinoquiensis. They provisionally kept the Macuira plants in Zamia muricata: their female cones resemble those of Venezuela, but their male cones have never been studied. For the reader, this means that older literature and cultivated plants labelled Zamia muricata may refer to Llanos plants, now Zamia orinoquiensis.

Relationships. The transcriptome phylogeny of Lindstrom and colleagues (2024), which sampled a plant from Carabobo, places Zamia muricata in a pair with Zamia lecointei, the two forming the sister group of Zamia orinoquiensis, within a clade that also includes Zamia amazonum and Zamia ulei.

Etymology and history

The epithet muricata comes from the Latin muricatus, “rough with short, hard points”, and refers to the small prickles on the petiole (Haynes, 2022, as quoted by The World List of Cycads).

The type is an undated collection by Alexander von Humboldt and Aimé Bonpland near Puerto Cabello (Carabobo, Venezuela), kept in Willdenow’s herbarium in Berlin (B-W), with an isotype at Utrecht (U). According to the 2022 authors, it probably dates from their stop at Puerto Cabello during a journey from Caracas in February and March 1800. The description of the variety angustifolia from a garden plant, in 1842, shows that the species was already grown in Europe in the nineteenth century.

Common names

No English name is attested. In Venezuela the names “acesiva” and “achichive” are recorded in Julian Steyermark’s Flora del Parque Nacional Morrocoy (1994), a park in the state of Falcón, quoted by Calonje and colleagues (2022).

In the wild

In Venezuela Zamia muricata grows in very dry, dry and humid tropical forest of the Lara-Falcón formation and the Coastal Range, between 10 and 900 m, in the states of Aragua, Carabobo, Falcón, Lara and Yaracuy. Mean annual temperatures there range from 21.5 to 27.3 °C (71 to 81 °F) and rainfall from 550 to 1,430 mm a year, with two peaks (July and November) and a very dry March.

In Colombia the species is known only from the Serranía de Macuira, an isolated range in the middle of the Guajira desert, more than 235 km from the Venezuelan populations: there it lives in cloud forest on hilltops, between 550 and 700 m. Less than 400 mm of rain falls each year, and the plants draw much of their water from the clouds intercepted by the trees.

Its phenology is still poorly known: in October 2021, female cones close to receptivity or ripe, and male cones immature or shedding pollen, were seen in two populations in Yaracuy; herbarium specimens carry ripe female cones from January to March and from September to November.

Conservation status and regulation

Zamia muricata is rated Least Concern (LC) by the IUCN, in an assessment by Cristina López-Gallego and Michael Calonje published in 2022 (The World List of Cycads; reference checked on Crossref); an earlier assessment by Dennis Stevenson, published in 2010, rated it Near Threatened (NT). The authors of the 2022 revision describe it as fairly widespread and locally abundant in Venezuela, present in several protected areas, with an extent of occurrence of about 42,000 km² and an area of occupancy of 140 km² (39 georeferenced localities).

Like all Zamia except Zamia restrepoi, which is in Appendix I, Zamia muricata is covered by the listing of the genus in CITES Appendix II, in force since 4 February 1977. Annotation #4 (the version adopted at CoP20, in force on 5 March 2026) exempts seeds, pollen, seedlings and tissue cultures obtained in vitro and transported in sterile containers, and cut flowers of artificially propagated plants; international trade in the plants themselves requires an export permit. In the European Union the species falls under Annex B of Regulation (EC) No 338/97, whose current list is set by Regulation (EU) 2026/1383, applicable since 29 June 2026. Species+, the official CITES database, names the species and confirms this status (checked on 3 October 2026).

This general information does not replace the official texts: check the regulations in force before buying or exchanging plants or seeds, ask the seller for proof of origin and prefer plants raised from cultivated seed.

Growing Zamia muricata

Zamia muricata is one of the more widely held species of its group: BGCI lists 27 gardens that declare it, and the 2022 authors studied cultivated plants at Montgomery Botanical Center and Marie Selby Botanical Gardens, in Florida, at Nong Nooch Tropical Botanical Garden, in Thailand, and in several Colombian gardens. Female cones are more numerous in cultivation than in the wild (up to five per stem).

Jungle Music describes it as a medium-sized cycad growing at a medium rate, from a habitat with a definite dry season, where it grows under taller trees; the nursery recommends filtered light and, because old plants form multi-stemmed clumps, leaving it room to spread sideways in the garden. Simon Lavaud, of the French specialist nursery Cycadales.eu, places it among the Zamia of the lowland forests of Central and South America, a group he rates difficult outside the tropics, for which he recommends a free-draining compost and water both neutral to acid, nights at about 22 °C (72 °F), with brief drops to about 15 °C (59 °F) tolerated, days at 28 to 30 °C (82 to 86 °F) and high air humidity (Lavaud, 2023). Its Venezuelan habitat, partly in dry forest, suggests that it tolerates dry spells better than rainforest Zamia, but no published trial confirms this.

Outdoor and in-ground cultivation

Outdoors it is a plant for tropical and frost-free subtropical gardens, in dappled shade under trees, in free-draining soil, with room for its clumps to spread. The many American gardens that hold it are mostly in southern Florida, coastal California and Hawaii, but none has published how its plants are grown.

Container cultivation

Elsewhere it is grown in a warm glasshouse or conservatory. A deep pot suits its underground, tuberous stem; a free-draining compost, regular watering in the growing season and a drier, warm rest in winter follow from its seasonally dry habitat. In France a grower on the Fous de palmiers forum showed a young plant in January 2013, without further details.

In cultivation in the UK, US and Australia

In short: well represented in American gardens, present at Kew and at Cairns.

  • United States: Montgomery Botanical Center, Coral Gables, Florida (one accession registered in 1999, according to its online catalogue, queried on 25 October 2026); Fairchild Tropical Botanic Garden (online Garden Explorer); Marie Selby Botanical Gardens, Sarasota (plants studied in 2022) and Naples Botanical Garden, Florida; Ganna Walska Lotusland, Santa Barbara, and San Diego Zoo, California; Como Park Zoo and Conservatory, St Paul, Minnesota; Honolulu Botanical Gardens, Waimea Valley and the University of Hawaii at Hilo, Hawaii; and the U.S. National Plant Germplasm System at Beltsville, Maryland (declarations to BGCI, queried on 25 October 2026).
  • United Kingdom: the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, declares it to BGCI. Trebrown Nurseries, a British nursery, rates it USDA zone 10a, a commercial classification.
  • Australia: the Cairns Botanic Gardens, in tropical Queensland, declares it to BGCI.

A BGCI declaration does not prove that the plant is still alive. Elsewhere, the species is declared by gardens in Europe (Amsterdam, Copenhagen, Giessen, Munich, Bayreuth, Prague, Warsaw, Lyon) and Asia (Singapore, Xishuangbanna, Shenzhen), among others.

Propagation

The plant is dioecious: a male and a female plant are needed to obtain seed, and in cultivation hand pollination. Its underground stem often branches in adults, but no propagation by division has been documented. No germination data specific to the species have been published; the first seedling leaf carries four leaflets. Seeds are exempt from CITES under annotation #4; make sure they come from cultivated plants.

Pests and diseases

No pest or disease specific to the species is documented. In cultivation, Zamia are chiefly at risk from rot in cold, waterlogged compost and from scale insects.

Cold hardiness

No measured cold record exists for Zamia muricata. Mean annual temperatures in its range are 21.5 to 27.3 °C (71 to 81 °F). Jungle Music reports, from its own nursery plants in California, that the species takes temperatures down to freezing, about 0 °C (32 °F), and perhaps a little below; this is a single grower’s experience, without a dated episode or details of the damage.

Mediterranean and European experience

No outdoor cultivation result has been published in France or elsewhere in Europe, and no dated frost episode concerns the species. The only French record is a young potted plant shown in 2013. For readers in Mediterranean-type climates such as southern California or southern Australia, the Californian nursery’s experience suggests that it could tolerate a brief light frost in a sheltered spot, but this has not been tested in Europe; a frost-free glasshouse remains the safe option.

United Kingdom, United States and Australia

Apart from Jungle Music’s report, no cold record has been published from these countries. In the UK it is a glasshouse plant.

Toxicity and precautions

No toxicity study specific to Zamia muricata has been published. The risk is, however, well documented in cycads: Zamia contain toxic glycosides (cycasin, macrozamin), from which methylazoxymethanol is derived, a compound toxic to the liver and nervous system, and the ASPCA cites cycasin and BMAA, a neurotoxic amino acid, for Zamia furfuracea, which it lists as toxic to dogs, cats and horses; the seeds are the most dangerous part. In the absence of evidence to the contrary, treat the plant as poisonous: keep seeds and leaves out of reach of children and animals, and wear gloves to clean 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.

Frequently asked questions

Where does Zamia muricata grow?

In northern Venezuela (Aragua, Carabobo, Falcón, Lara and Yaracuy), from near sea level to 900 m, and in Colombia only in the Serranía de Macuira, on the Guajira peninsula.

Does it grow in the Colombian Llanos?

No. The Zamia of the Llanos, long called Zamia muricata, were described in 2022 as a separate species, Zamia orinoquiensis.

Where does the name come from?

From the Latin muricatus, “rough with points”, because of the small prickles that cover the petiole. Willdenow described it in 1806 from a collection made by Humboldt and Bonpland at Puerto Cabello.

How can it be recognised?

By its underground, often branched stem, its 2 to 9 leaves carrying 15 to 54 slender leaflets toothed near the tip, its cream male cones and its grey-green female cones on a stalk 12 to 27 cm long.

Is it endangered?

Not according to the IUCN, which rates it Least Concern (2022): it is widespread and locally abundant in Venezuela, and present in several protected areas. Like all Zamia, it remains subject to CITES.

Is it hardy?

Only marginally, at best. No measured data exist; a Californian nursery reports that it takes about 0 °C (32 °F), perhaps a little less, but its range is tropical, with annual means above 21 °C (70 °F).

Is it poisonous?

It must be assumed so. No analysis specific to the species exists, but the cycads studied contain serious toxins, mainly in the seeds.

Further reading on Succulentes

Sources

Reference sites

Bibliography

  • Willdenow, C.L. (1806). Species Plantarum, ed. 4, 4(2): 847–848. Berlin. [Original description; cited after The World List of Cycads and Calonje and colleagues (2022).]
  • Calonje, M., Betancur, J., Lindstrom, A., López-Gallego, C., Castro, J., Castro, C., Niño, S.M. & Canelón Barraez, D. (2022). Zamia orinoquiensis (Zamiaceae, Cycadales), a new species from the western Orinoquía region of Colombia. Phytotaxa 556(2): 119–135. https://doi.org/10.11646/phytotaxa.556.2.2 [Redescription and recircumscription of Zamia muricata; full text consulted.]
  • Calonje, M., Esquivel, H.E., Morales, G., Mora-Lizcano, Y.A. & Stevenson, D.W. (2012). A new arborescent species of Zamia (Cycadales, Zamiaceae) from the department of Huila, Eastern Cordillera of Colombia. Caldasia 34(2): 283–290. [Full text consulted.]
  • Calderón, E. & Stevenson, D.W. (2003). Una nueva especie del género Zamia L. (Zamiaceae), de los Andes de Colombia y clave actualizada para las especies del género en Colombia. Revista de la Academia Colombiana de Ciencias Exactas, Físicas y Naturales 27(105): 485–490. [Key consulted.]
  • Lindstrom, A., Habib, S., Dong, S., Gong, Y., Liu, J., Calonje, M., Stevenson, D. & Zhang, S. (2024). Transcriptome sequencing data provide a solid base to understand the phylogenetic relationships, biogeography and reticulated evolution of the genus Zamia L. (Cycadales: Zamiaceae). Annals of Botany 134(5): 747–768. https://doi.org/10.1093/aob/mcae065 [Full text read on PubMed Central.]
  • López-Gallego, C. & Calonje, M. (2022). Zamia muricata. The IUCN Red List of Threatened Species 2022: e.T213252296A69841490. https://doi.org/10.2305/IUCN.UK.2022-1.RLTS.T213252296A69841490.en [Red List assessment; reference given by The World List of Cycads and checked on Crossref; the Red List page could not be consulted.]
  • Stevenson, D.W. (2010). Zamia muricata. The IUCN Red List of Threatened Species 2010: e.T42169A10672290. https://doi.org/10.2305/IUCN.UK.2010-3.RLTS.T42169A10672290.en [Earlier assessment (NT); reference checked on Crossref.]
  • Haynes, J.L. (2022). Etymological compendium of cycad names. Phytotaxa 550(1): 1–31. https://doi.org/10.11646/phytotaxa.550.1.1 [Source of the etymology 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. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.21958524 [Reference checklist; consulted directly.]