Zamia paucijuga

Zamia paucijuga is a cycad with an underground stem from the Pacific side of Mexico, ranging from Nayarit to Oaxaca through very varied habitats, from open dry forest to oak and pine forest. One of the three most widespread Mexican species of the genus Zamia, it is also one of the hardest to identify without cones. Its name, meaning “with few pairs of leaflets”, is misleading: adult plants carry many. The IUCN rates it Near Threatened (2022 assessment).

Key facts about Zamia paucijuga

  • Accepted name: Zamia paucijuga Wieland (1916), 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: no synonym; the Michoacán populations described in 2019 as Zamia stenophyllidia were previously included in Zamia paucijuga
  • Family: Zamiaceae, order Cycadales
  • Common names: none attested in English or Spanish
  • Natural range: Mexico, Pacific slope (Colima, Guerrero, Jalisco, Michoacán, Nayarit, Oaxaca), from sea level to about 1,200 m
  • IUCN status: Near Threatened (NT), criterion A2c, 2022 assessment
  • CITES and other protection: CITES Appendix II (whole genus; seeds exempt under annotation #4); Annex B in the European Union; “subject to special protection” (Pr) under Mexican standard NOM-059-SEMARNAT-2010, according to a 2014 review
  • Documented hardiness: no measured data; described as frost-sensitive by a Californian nursery (see Cold hardiness)
  • Light and soil: open dry forest, tropical deciduous and semi-deciduous forest, oak and pine-oak forest, also secondary vegetation; filtered light in cultivation
  • Habit and adult size: underground stem, about 8 cm across in the plant figured in 1916; 7.5 to 10 cm wide and 15 to 20 cm tall according to a Californian nursery; few leaves
  • In the UK, US and Australia: Montgomery Botanical Center, Fairchild Tropical Botanic Garden, Naples Botanical Garden and four other American gardens; Cairns Botanic Gardens (Australia); no British record
  • Toxicity: no data specific to the species; treat it as poisonous, like all cycads (see Toxicity and precautions)

How to recognise Zamia paucijuga

Zamia paucijuga is a small cycad with an underground stem and few leaves, recognised in the field mainly by where it grows: it is the Zamia of the Mexican Pacific lowlands. Its original description amounts to the figure of a single leaf; the detailed modern descriptions are in the 2009 revision of the Zamia of Mega-Mexico and in the 2019 article that redefined the species, both behind a paywall. The open-access sources give the following:

  • Stem: underground; about 8 cm in diameter in the plant figured by Wieland (1916). The Californian specialist nursery Jungle Music (San Diego) gives stems 7.5 to 10 cm (3 to 4 in) wide and 15 to 20 cm (6 to 8 in) tall.
  • Leaves: few, according to the same nursery, with fairly thin leaflets 15 to 20 cm (6 to 8 in) long; Wieland described leaflets “of a papery thinness”, with veins tending to form a network.
  • Leaflets: leathery, linear-lanceolate to oblanceolate, as in the other members of the Zamia loddigesii complex (Nicolalde-Morejón and colleagues, 2011); the two descriptions, papery and leathery, are given as published.
  • Variability: high, within as well as between populations, perhaps reflecting the diversity of habitats in which the species grows (Nicolalde-Morejón and colleagues, 2024); Jungle Music also notes a lot of variation in leaflet size and appearance in the wild.
  • Chromosomes: the species shows karyotype polymorphism, already described by Aldo Moretti in 1990; a Naples study counted from 19 to 28 chromosomes depending on the plant (Napolitano and colleagues, 2004 [2006]).
  • Cones: according to Jungle Music, the plant can cone while still very small.

The epithet, “with few pairs”, apparently refers to the few pairs of leaflets of the type; Loran Whitelock (2002), quoted by Haynes (2022), points out that it is a misnomer, since adult leaves carry many pairs of leaflets.

Hybrids

No hybrid, natural or raised in cultivation, has been documented.

Possible confusion

Zamia paucijuga belongs to the Zamia loddigesii complex, together with Zamia loddigesii itself and Zamia polymorpha, now a synonym of Zamia prasina according to The World List of Cycads: these are the most widespread species in Mexico and, according to the authors of a 2011 study, the most difficult to identify. Their similarity has led to many misidentifications of sterile herbarium specimens. Geography helps: Zamia paucijuga lives on the Pacific coastal plain, Zamia loddigesii on the Gulf of Mexico plain, Zamia prasina on the Yucatán Peninsula.

  • Zamia stenophyllidia, of Michoacán, long included in Zamia paucijuga: linear, papery, very narrow leaflets (0.8 cm wide at most), short stout prickles (2 mm at most), yellowish ovoid female cones; it grows in oak forest between 450 and 600 m;
  • Zamia herrerae and Zamia spartea, the two other species of the Mexican Pacific slope recognised in 2019: the first has papery, lanceolate, toothed leaflets; the second, from the Isthmus of Tehuantepec, has reddish-brown new leaves and linear leaflets (key of Nicolalde-Morejón and colleagues, 2024).

Taxonomy

Zamia paucijuga 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, which cites “Publ. Carnegie Inst. Wash. 34(2): 212 (1916)”); POWO itself could not be consulted. It was published in 1916 by George Reber Wieland, an American palaeobotanist, in the second volume of his American Fossil Cycads (page 212, figure 86), a work devoted mainly to fossil cycads. The page, distributed by The Cycad Society, shows that Wieland based the species on a leaf from north of “Minizo”, on the Pacific coast of Oaxaca, and that he made it a new species “arbitrarily”, its thin leaflets matching no described form. The lectotype is that illustration (figure 86).

In 2019 Fernando Nicolalde-Morejón, Lilí Martínez-Domínguez, Dennis Stevenson and Francisco Vergara-Silva revised all the Zamia of the Mexican Pacific coastal plain (Nordic Journal of Botany 37). They recognised four species: Zamia paucijuga, Zamia herrerae, Zamia spartea and a new one, Zamia stenophyllidia, described from Michoacán on the basis of populations previously placed in Zamia paucijuga. This split made it necessary to pin down what the name Zamia paucijuga covers: since an old figure cannot settle the question, the authors designated an epitype, a modern specimen that fixes the interpretation of the name. Unlike Zamia loddigesii, with a dozen associated names, Zamia paucijuga has no complicated history of synonymy.

The transcriptome phylogeny of Lindstrom and colleagues (2024) sampled two plants from the northern and southern ends of the range (Nayarit and Oaxaca): both fall clearly within the loddigesii–furfuracea complex (subclade III-A), whereas Calonje and colleagues (2019) had found the species of western Mega-Mexico to form their own subclade. A phylogeographic study of 13 populations (Nolasco-Soto and colleagues, 2015) dates the differentiation of the populations to the Pleistocene.

Etymology and history

The epithet paucijuga comes from the Latin pauci-, “few”, and jugum, “pair”: it apparently refers to the few pairs of leaflets of the type, a misnomer for adult plants (Whitelock 2002, quoted by Haynes 2022 and The World List of Cycads).

The epitype was collected on 24 May 2005 at San Bartolomé Loxicha (Oaxaca) by Fernando Nicolalde-Morejón and colleagues (no. 1467) and is kept in the herbarium of the Instituto de Ecología in Xalapa (XAL). Wild-collected plants studied by botanists of the University of Naples Federico II, gathered in Mexico by the authors and by Mexican, American and Neapolitan researchers, were distributed to the botanic garden of Naples, the New York Botanical Garden and Fairchild Tropical Garden in Miami (Napolitano and colleagues, 2004 [2006]).

Common names

No common name is attested in English or Spanish. The ethnobotanical study of Bonta and colleagues (2019) records no Spanish or Indigenous term linking the cycads of western Mexico to food, but reports the word “peyote” applied to parts of Zamia paucijuga (see Traditional uses); it is not a name of the plant in general use.

In the wild

Zamia paucijuga is endemic to Mexico. The World List of Cycads records it in the states of Colima, Guerrero, Jalisco, Michoacán, Nayarit and Oaxaca; some secondary sources add Chiapas and the island of María Cleofas, which the reference checklist does not accept. It occupies the Pacific coastal plain from Nayarit to Oaxaca, in scattered populations along about 1,500 km of coast (Napolitano and colleagues, 2004 [2006]), in varied habitats: open dry forest, tropical deciduous or semi-deciduous forest, oak forest and pine-oak forest (Nicolalde-Morejón and colleagues, 2011, 2024).

It grows from sea level to about 1,200 m (20 to 1,200 m in the 2014 review of Mexican Zamiaceae), including in secondary vegetation and cultivated areas (Martínez-Domínguez and colleagues, 2026). Bonta and colleagues (2019) describe the cycads of western Mexico as isolated populations scattered across the Sierra Madre Occidental, from sea level to over 2,000 m for the group as a whole. Its pollinator and phenology are not documented.

Conservation status and regulation

Zamia paucijuga is rated Near Threatened (NT) by the IUCN under criterion A2c, in an assessment by J.D. Bösenberg published in 2022: criterion A2c refers to a past population decline inferred from loss or degradation of habitat, without reaching the thresholds of a threatened category; an earlier assessment, by A. Vovides and J. Chemnick, had been published in 2010. The Red List page could not be consulted directly. In Mexico, the 2014 review by Nicolalde-Morejón and colleagues lists it as “subject to special protection” (Pr) under the official standard NOM-059-SEMARNAT-2010.

Like all Zamia except Zamia restrepoi, which is in Appendix I, Zamia paucijuga 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 paucijuga

No growing guidelines specific to Zamia paucijuga have been published. Its range, from dry forest to oak and pine forest, suggests that it tolerates a marked dry season; no published trial confirms this. Jungle Music, a specialist nursery in San Diego, describes it as frost-sensitive and preferring filtered light, and as far less exotic-looking than most Zamia.

Simon Lavaud, of the French specialist nursery Cycadales.eu, places it in his group of Zamia from Mexico, Guatemala, El Salvador and Honduras, of medium difficulty, most of which come from climates with a marked dry season. For this group he recommends a free-draining, slightly alkaline or neutral compost; winter temperatures of 5 to 10 °C (41 to 50 °F) with daytime rises to 20 to 25 °C (68 to 77 °F); compost kept fairly dry, but not parched, during cool spells; and at least four to six months a year of summer temperatures, 25 to 30 °C (77 to 86 °F) by day (Lavaud, 2023). These are general recommendations for a group, not trials on the species.

Outdoor and in-ground cultivation

Outdoors it is only realistic in frost-free tropical and subtropical climates with a dry season, in free-draining soil and light shade, as in southern Florida, where Montgomery Botanical Center and Naples Botanical Garden grow cycads in the ground; neither says where its plants of this species are kept. No outdoor result has been published for Mediterranean climates.

Container cultivation

In temperate climates it is a plant for a frost-free glasshouse or conservatory, in a mineral, free-draining compost watered generously in summer and kept on the dry side in winter. Its small size and few leaves suit a pot, and it can cone while still small.

In cultivation in the UK, US and Australia

In short: a fairly well represented species in American collections, recorded in one Australian garden and absent from British records.

  • United States: Montgomery Botanical Center (Coral Gables, Florida) lists ten accession numbers in its online catalogue, dating from 1993 to 2004 according to their numbers; Fairchild Tropical Botanic Garden (Miami) lists it in its online catalogue and received wild-collected plants studied by the Naples botanists; BGCI also records it at Naples Botanical Garden (Florida), the University of California Botanical Garden at Berkeley, Descanso Gardens (La Cañada Flintridge, California), the National Tropical Botanical Garden and the University of Hawaii at Hilo (catalogues and BGCI queried on 25 October 2026). The New York Botanical Garden received plants from the same wild collections (Napolitano and colleagues, 2004 [2006]).
  • Australia: Cairns Botanic Gardens (Queensland), according to BGCI; no record in the online catalogue of the Royal Botanic Garden Sydney.
  • United Kingdom: no record in BGCI.

A BGCI declaration shows that a garden held the plant at some point, not that it is alive there today. Elsewhere, BGCI lists gardens in Mexico, China, the Czech Republic and France (Caen).

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; make sure they come from cultivated plants.

Pests and diseases

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

Cold hardiness

No measured cold tolerance data exist for Zamia paucijuga. Part of its range reaches oak and pine forest, cooler than the coastal plain, but no minimum temperature has been published for its sites. Jungle Music describes it as frost-sensitive.

Mediterranean and European experience

No growing result has been published in France, either in the ground or in a pot, and no dated frost episode concerns the species. For readers in Mediterranean-type climates such as coastal California or southern Australia, it should be treated as frost-tender until trials show otherwise.

United Kingdom, United States and Australia

No cold record has been published. The gardens that hold it are mostly in southern Florida, coastal California and Hawaii, and one in tropical Queensland; none says whether its plants are outdoors. Trebrown, a British nursery, gives it USDA zone 10a, a commercial rating, not a measured result. In the UK it needs a frost-free glasshouse.

Toxicity and precautions

No toxicity study specific to Zamia paucijuga 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

Uses are poorly documented. The ethnobotanical study of Mexican and northern Central American cycads by Bonta and colleagues (2019) notes that data are scarce for western Mexico and that no local term or knowledge links these cycads to food today. The same study reports narcotic or supposedly hallucinogenic uses, under the name “peyote”, for Zamia paucijuga and Dioon sonorense in western Mexico. These are informants’ accounts gathered by the authors, not a studied use: given the toxicity of cycads, they must never be imitated.

Frequently asked questions

Where does Zamia paucijuga grow?

On the Pacific side of Mexico, from Nayarit to Oaxaca (Colima, Guerrero, Jalisco, Michoacán, Nayarit, Oaxaca), from sea level to about 1,200 m, in dry forest, tropical deciduous forest and oak and pine forest.

Why is it called paucijuga if it has many leaflets?

Because the type apparently carried few pairs of leaflets. The name, “with few pairs”, is misleading for adult plants, which carry many.

Is it the same plant as Zamia loddigesii?

No. The two species belong to the same complex and look alike, but Zamia loddigesii grows on the Gulf of Mexico side and Zamia paucijuga on the Pacific side.

What is Zamia stenophyllidia?

A species from Michoacán described in 2019 from populations previously included in Zamia paucijuga; it is recognised by its very narrow linear leaflets, 0.8 cm wide at most.

Is it endangered?

Moderately. The IUCN rates it Near Threatened (2022) because of population decline linked to habitat loss, but it remains one of the most widespread Zamia in Mexico.

Is it hardy?

No reliable data exist. A Californian nursery describes it as frost-sensitive; treat it as a plant to keep frost-free.

Is it poisonous?

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

Further reading on Succulentes

Sources

Reference sites

Bibliography

  • Wieland, G.R. (1916). American Fossil Cycads, vol. 2. Carnegie Institution of Washington, publication 34, Washington: 212, fig. 86. [Original description; page 212 read in the copy distributed by The Cycad Society.]
  • Nicolalde-Morejón, F., Vovides, A.P. & Stevenson, D.W. (2009). Taxonomic revision of Zamia in Mega-Mexico. Brittonia 61(4): 301–335. https://doi.org/10.1007/s12228-009-9077-9 [Behind a paywall; not consulted.]
  • Nicolalde-Morejón, F., Martínez-Domínguez, L., Stevenson, D.W. & Vergara-Silva, F. (2019). Disentangling the identity of Zamia from Mexican Pacific seaboard, with a description of a new species. Nordic Journal of Botany 37(9): e02430. https://doi.org/10.1111/njb.02430 [Abstract read; full text behind a paywall.]
  • Nicolalde-Morejón, F., González-Astorga, J., Vergara-Silva, F. & Vovides, A.P. (2011). Perspectivas sistemáticas de Zamia (Zamiaceae) en Megaméxico: de la taxonomía alfa a los códigos de barras genéticos. Revista Mexicana de Biodiversidad 82: 341–355. [Full text read.]
  • Nicolalde-Morejón, F., González-Astorga, J., Vergara-Silva, F., Stevenson, D.W., Rojas-Soto, O. & Medina-Villarreal, A. (2014). Biodiversidad de Zamiaceae en México. Revista Mexicana de Biodiversidad Suppl. 85: S114–S125. https://doi.org/10.7550/rmb.38114 [Full text read.]
  • Nicolalde-Morejón, F. et al. (2024). Reestablishment of Zamia lawsoniana (Zamiaceae, Cycadales), an endemic species of Mexico, with first description of its reproductive structures. Acta Botanica Mexicana 131: e2262. https://doi.org/10.21829/abm131.2024.2262 [Full text read.]
  • Martínez-Domínguez, L., Nicolalde-Morejón, F., Stevenson, D.W., Lorea-Hernández, F.G. & Vergara-Silva, F. (2026). A striking new species of Dioon (Zamiaceae) from pine and pine-oak forest of Guerrero, Mexico. PhytoKeys 274: 229–245. https://doi.org/10.3897/phytokeys.274.173907 [Full text read.]
  • Napolitano, A., Caputo, P. & Moretti, A. (2004 [2006]). Karyology, phytogeography, and the origin of intraspecific karyotypic variation in Zamia paucijuga and Zamia polymorpha (Zamiaceae). Delpinoa n.s. 46: 71–83. [Full text read.]
  • Nolasco-Soto, J., González-Astorga, J., Nicolalde-Morejón, F., Vergara-Silva, F., Espinosa de los Monteros, A. & Medina-Villarreal, A. (2015). Phylogeography and demographic history of Zamia paucijuga Wieland (Zamiaceae), a cycad species from the Mexican Pacific slope. Plant Systematics and Evolution 301: 623–637. https://doi.org/10.1007/s00606-014-1101-1 [Abstract read (Europe PMC).]
  • 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.]
  • Bonta, M., Pulido-Silva, M.T., Diego-Vargas, T., Vite-Reyes, A., Vovides, A.P. & Cibrián-Jaramillo, A. (2019). Ethnobotany of Mexican and northern Central American cycads (Zamiaceae). Journal of Ethnobiology and Ethnomedicine 15: 4. https://doi.org/10.1186/s13002-018-0282-z [Full text read.]
  • Bösenberg, J.D. (2022). Zamia paucijuga. The IUCN Red List of Threatened Species 2022: e.T42172A69841256. https://doi.org/10.2305/IUCN.UK.2022-1.RLTS.T42172A69841256.en [Red List assessment; reference given by The World List of Cycads and checked on Crossref; the Red List page could not be consulted.]
  • Vovides, A. & Chemnick, J. (2010). Zamia paucijuga. The IUCN Red List of Threatened Species 2010: e.T42172A10646771. https://doi.org/10.2305/IUCN.UK.2010-3.RLTS.T42172A10646771.en [Earlier assessment; reference checked on Crossref, not consulted.]
  • Lavaud, S. (2023). Comment cultiver les Zamia en climat tempéré. Cycadales.eu. [Growing advice for groups of species; read directly.]
  • Haynes, J.L. (2022). Etymological compendium of cycad names. Phytotaxa 550(1): 1–31. https://doi.org/10.11646/phytotaxa.550.1.1 [Compendium 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. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.21958524 [Reference checklist; consulted directly.]