Epiphytic cycad

[Andy]

Anyone ever heard of an epiphytic cycad?!? This group of trees were loaded with epiphytes. One of the trees also had a hechtia growing on a trunk (Hechtia lundelliorum post). Sorry the picture isn't so conclusive. Looking through binoculars made it much more clear.

A couple of shots of the trees:




And the cycad


There was also a smaller one further up the branch. They looked different than the ferns that were on other branches...

-andy

[spath]

Andy, approximately where about and in what state was this? Were there a lot more Zamias found along the ground and if so do you have more pics? -Jeremy

[Andy]

Well, I'm definitely not a cycad expert, so no clue what they are...but there were tons and tons and tons of these all along the mountain roads. These pictures were taken from three different stops in Hidalgo and Queretaro. There were plants along most of the drive, we only stopped a couple of times. The one in the tree was down under 2000' but most we saw were around 5000'+.

[gonzer]

Fantastic photo journalism Andy, I'm sure you were in Tillandsia heaven too.

[Andy]

Thanks Gonz. Yeah, I was loving that little pocket of trees. Unfortunately I couldn't tell what they were. There were only 2-3 blooming at the time and there were a bunch of the tank-like ones that all looked the same out of bloom, but you could see old bloom remnants that show different inflorescences and blooming at different sizes. I was actually surprised at how few I could recognized. My guess was that there were at least 12 species there, but hard to say for sure. Most were bigger than what are in cultivation (and I guess I need to brush up on the couple of thousand that aren't in the trade!). But check this bugger out. There were some up in the tree like this that were blooming, but this one was laying on the roadside leaning up against a barbed wired fence.

Remember I'm a little over 6' and the butt of this bugger is sitting on the ground. No wonder it fell over!

[cycadjungle]

Well, you have a very important discovery if these plants are growing in Mexico. For now, I would tell anyone the very exact location because you have a brand new species here, or a known species that has never been reported to be growing in trees. The only well known zamia species that is epiphytic is Zamia pseudoparasitica and it pretty much just comes from Panama. When I first was reding the posts, before I got down to where you said these came from, I was just going to answer the question that someone had and just say, hea, you were in Panama, right? However, looking at the zamias in the trees it doesn't hang down like pseudoparasitica. These leaves are upright where the Panama zamias would have leaves about 10 feet long and hanging down a lot on either side of the branches. YOU FOUND SOMETHING SPECIAL!
These other pictures do not look like the same species. These look like ceratozamias and maybe, the smaller one with the shorter leaves looks like a different species that those larger ones, and I think it is the one that has just been described.
Andy, we need to talk more, maybe off the forum here. I know a few taxonomists that would like to find out more about these, but also, not to let the people know about them who will just go down and remove them all before they get a chance to be described.
Tom Broome
Past President
The Cycad Society.

[Andy]

So second guessing whether this is a cycad or a fern, I cropped the images to try to give a better view. Do these help clear anything up?

And to clear up Spath's question, I didn't notice anything directly underneath this tree. The understory was really thick and when I scrambled down to the downed tree with the Hechtia lundelliorum on the trunk I was only in/on big rock road rubble (they had just worked on that corner).
-andy

[cycadjungle]

I see, are those flower spikes coming out of the cycad looking plant? If so, those aren't cycads. The ones in the other 2 pictures were for sure though. It is hard to think that if there were some epiphytic cycads that thick in Mexico, you would think that someone would have already seen them...........but, you never know where the next new species might be at.

[Andy]

Yeah, when I cropped those I was wondering if they could be big orchids. But these were the only ones I saw in the trees. The ones that were all over were the ceratozamias hanging over the road sides.

[Steve Steward]

Looks like orchids to me. If you look closely, the leaves are thick and seem to have a mid-groove.

Steve

[Jeff Chemnick]

The cycadoid epiphyte looks like an Epidendrum-type orchid to me. The ceratozamias in Queretaro would be part of the vast "latifolia" mess. In Hidalgo, fusco-viridis would be the likely candidate anywhere near Molango. In both states one can find Ceratozamia sabatoi hanging out in road cuts...but it's much smaller leafed and tougher to spot along the road.
As Tom says, the only truly epiphytic cycad is Zamia pseudoparasitica in Panama. And the leaves are pendant. But other species do find themselves from time to time growing in trees...apparently the result of seed dispersal by bird or small mammal into the crotch of large branches with sufficient organic material to support the growth of a normally terrestrial cycad. I photographed a Dioon spinulosum years ago that was growing some 70 feet up a large forest tree in Oaxaca. I think Jody Haynes posted the image somewhere in the Cycad Pages.

Jeff

[Andy]

Thanks for the info Jeff. I'm lucky/happy to see the cycads but certainly don't know what they are. The ceratozamias were just everywhere. Never crossed into my mind that being pretty much (seemingly) continuously wide-spread that it would be several species. Do they naturally cross at all with that proximity? I'm sure they weren't actually contiguous or mixed colonies, but seems like there has to be some opportunity. There were so many that I was really amazed when I realized that they were cycads and not just big ferns.

I also saw many Agave dioonioides :P The grass that was around them when lit just right made them look just like dioons. I got a pretty good laugh out of it. I'm glad that I was able to crop the picture of the orchids to see what they were before too much fuss was made.

[virtualpalm]

Jeff, your photo is posted here: http://www.plantapalm.com/vce/specie...spinulosum.htm

Jody

[Andy]

Thanks guys. Neat plants. But I think I'll leave the cycads to you cycad nuts. Ha ha. I'll stick with my bromeliads. That epiphytic dioon is pretty cool. Was it in a recently disturbed location? Seems odd that it would be up on the trunk of a tree that appears dead (and I would have to assume that the tree wasn't already dead when it germinated). After looking at some pictures of the Zamia pseudoparasitica I am pretty impressed. That is a very cool cycad.

[virtualpalm]

Andy, if you like epiphytes and you enjoyed the photos of Zamia pseudoparasitica that you saw on the web, then you should REALLY like this:

http://www.cycad.org/documents/Jun-S...e-but-True.pdf

Jody

[Andy]

Thanks Jody, that is an awesome plant (and article). I love seeing things like that...things that are unexpected or an oddity. Do many people grow it, or does it do well cultivated? Seems like it would present some interesting challenges to keep it happy.
-andy

[virtualpalm]

It is not uncommon in cultivation. Seedlings can be a bit tricky, but once the plants get a sizeable caudex (around 1-1.5" diam.) they are much easier. Most people grow them in hanging baskets or hanging pots in orchid or anthurium mix.

My plant has a 3" caudex and leaves that are around 4.5 feet long:



And here is a photo that I took near La Fortuna, Panama. This tree had literally dozens of Zamia pseudoparasitica in it.



Jody

[Andy]

Nice, very cool cycad. How long does it take from seedling to the ~1.5" caudex? Is it a fast or a slow growing cycad? Does it pick up speed as it forms the caudex? I would wonder about the low humidity here, it looks like it would appreciate more humidity than I have here in semi-inland San Diego. Definitely a cycad that I might be willing to go a little bit out of my budget to get (yikes, cycads are expensive!).

[cycadjungle]

These plants can grow quite fast if they are in the right area, like in Hawaii. I know of 3 year old plants gettting 3 inch stems. The secret to these plants is that you don't treat them like a cycad, you treat them like an epiphyte. They like the air movement like orchids want to have. You use a very loose medium and the larger the chunks, the better off you are, like some orchids. They really Don't need all that much extra humidity compared to some of the cloud forest zamias. They get really upset if it gets at or below freezing, so warmth is very important. These plants don't HAVE to be expensive, especially if you start small. There are lots of these plants being bred in Hawaii and if you know the right people, you can find a good sized one at a very modest price. Even though this is a terrible picture of myself, this IS a decent picture of one that is just under 4 years old.

[Andy]

Cool. Thanks for that info. Good to hear that they aren't unbearably slow and don't require lots of humidity. For some reason I just expected all cycads to be slow growers. I will definitely look into finding one. Now that I know a little bit more about these epiphytes, I must say I'm pretty impressed.

[cycadjungle]

You shouldn't assume that ALL cycads grow slow. There are some that outright haul ass. Given good growing conditions, I grew some Cycas taitungensis plants that produced up to 6 flushes in a year and from seed, I got plants to have a stem height of 3 feet and a 12 foot spread in just under 4 years. Another fast growing cycad would be Cycas debaoensis. They can mature and produce cones in 3 years from seed. At that point the stem would be 6 inches across and they would be producing leaves that are 10 to 12 feet long, giving them a 20 foot spread. These are becoming one of my favorite cycads. Here is a picture I took of a smaller, 2 year old plant.