Encephalartos latifrons white stem crown and cone

The glossy, dark green leaves of Encephalartos latifrons become 1 m to 1,5 m long, their tips curling back markedly. In this photo the sturdy lemon green petioles, broadening at the base, angle out around the stem crown. The lowermost leaflets indicating where the petiole begins are sometimes only prickles in this species.

The short, broad leaflets of E. latifrons have entire upper margins (or mostly so), contrasting notably against the three or four conspicuous lobes of the lower margins, triangular and spine-tipped. These lobes are twisted out of the plain of the leaflet. Leaflet attachment to the rachis is broad, in sessile fashion.

The leaflets overlap incubously towards the leaf tips, the upper smooth (or mainly) smooth margins of the leaflets visible on the inside or upper leaf surfaces. Young leaflets start off with fine hairs along their upper (adaxial) surfaces, but soon lose them to become dark, hard, rigid and rough to the touch. Longitudinal, parallel veins are conspicuous along the lower, (abaxial) leaflet surfaces.

The stem top is densely covered in white woolliness around the single pale green cone in picture. E. latifrons produces one to three olive green male (thinner, up to 17 cm) or female (thicker, up to 25 cm) cones in midsummer (of only some years). Cones grow on short, stout stalks, the one in picture completely masked by the woolly cataphylls or support leaves.

Seeds released from ripe cones of female plants are bright red, about 5 cm long, 2,5 cm wide.

Leaflets with spine-tipped lobes also characterise E. trispinosus and E. horridus, but those plants have blue-green to blue-grey leaves. The similarity to E. ferox that has spiny lobes as well as green leaves, is probably dealt with in distribution area: E. ferox, a small plant, only grows in KwaZulu-Natal and further north (Coates Palgrave, 2002; Hugo, 2014; www.plantzafrica.com).