Encephalartos latifrons

Encephalartos latifrons, the Albany cycad, grows stems of up to 3 m in length and 45 cm in diameter (SA Tree List No. 7). The long, gracefully curving leaves of E. latifrons are among the broadest of all cycads (E. ferox has some of the broadest leaflets). The specific epithet, latifrons, is derived from the Latin late meaning broad and frons meaning leaf.

Below the green leaves of the well-known Kirstenbosch tree in picture, the brown “skirt” of drooping, dead leaves persists, typical of the species. Suckers are commonly found around the base, the stem also often branching at the base.

The species distribution is small, the plant being endemic to a small area in the Eastern Cape. The habitat is scrub bush and on rocky outcrops.

E. latifrons is critically endangered, virtually extinct in habitat early in the twenty first century. Maybe fewer than 100 plants survive in nature, scattered in very small groups, the sex ratio four males for every female plant. As the distances of the female plants from a pollen provider, depending on (mostly) wind pollination may be around a kilometre, viability of the species is more or less lost (Coates Palgrave, 2002; Hugo, 2014; www.plantzafrica.com; http://www.iucnredlist.org).