"What on Earth kind of palm is that?" I heard myself almost say, before noticing the 21-inch-long (53 cm), pale-tan-colored item emerging among the fronds at the trunk's top. In fact, there were two of them, and you can see a close-up of the one on the tree's other side below:

Palms don't produce fruits like that. Typical palm fruits are like small coconuts, for coconuts are indeed palm fruits. What's in the picture is some kind of cone. When finally I'd noticed all this I realized I had a cycad, one of those "living fossils" it's always nice to encounter. Cycads are gymnosperms and thus most closely related to plants such as ginkgos and yews, but really their closest relatives went extinct millions of years ago, so now cycads as a group occupy a rather isolated branch of the evolutionary Tree of Life.

We've run into a native Mexican cycad before, Dioon edule, back in Querétaro. You can see that smaller species at http://www.backyardnature.net/q/cycad.htm.

Cycads can be hard to identify to species level if you don't have the seeds, and I don't, but my best guess is that what's in the picture is a close relative to our Querétaro discovery, DIOON SPINULOSA, sometimes called the Tree Cycad or Blue Dioon. It's endemic to a small part of Veracruz State, and is endangered, but is being planted widely because it's such a wonderful tree. It's really a distinction to have such a large one living here.

A good field mark for cycads of the genus Dioon is that the frond sections, or pinnae, bear several parallel veins -- there's no outstanding mid-vein or reticulation. Also, each pinna bears small, sharp, stiff "teeth" along its margins. All this is below:

The local folks call the tree "Piña de Brasil," or "Brazilian Pineapple." The pineapple part is understandable, but everyone should be clear that this is a very special Mexican native, not something from Brazil

from the January 31,  2010 Newsletter issued from Hacienda Chichen Resort beside Chichén Itzá Ruins, central Yucatán, MÉXICO
A RIPE CYCAD FRUIT
Upon my arrival at Hacienda Chichen last November the very first plant profiled in this Newsletter was the amazing Tree Cycad, Dioon spinulosa, standing so handsomely next to the Office's entrance, as seen above.

The second picture from the top of this page shows a 21-inch- long (53 cm) cone, or fruit, suspended from the cycad's crown. This week that same cone reached maturity and broke apart in a very spectacular manner. You can what it looked like Monday morning below:

Most of the cone had disintegrated into pieces, which lay heaped beneath the cycad. Anyone who has ever dissected a pinecone, or seen them shattered on the road where they'd been run over by cars, can see that the cycad's cone is structured similarly; numerous seed-bearing scales are attached spirally around a central axis. Among pines, the scales are somewhat dry and woody, but these scales are different. You can see a single scale in the palm of my hand below:

In that picture notice the two yellow, oval seeds held at about the level of my little finger's tip. Here we can really see the "gymnos" in "Gymnosperm." For, "gymnos" is classical Greek for "naked," so "Gymnosperms" are plants with "naked seeds." And those two seeds on their scale perches are about as naked as they can be. Remember that in Angiosperm fruits the seeds are covered. Cherry seeds are embedded in sweet flesh; a maple's fruit has its seed surrounded by a dry husk that enlarges on one side into a papery wing. In a sense, the gymnosperms' naked seeds recall a moment in evolutionary history when plants hadn't yet figured out the advantages to embedding their seeds in various coverings.

This cycad species is so rare and beautiful that it would be the star in any garden. Therefore, why not plant the seeds and sell the seedlings at a hefty price? I collected all the fallen scales with their seeds ready to do just that. However, I had a certain doubt: My books say that the main cycad genus Cycas is "dioecious" -- plants either male or female. I have no information about this genus, Dioon, but if it's also dioecious we may be in trouble because I know of no male tree hereabouts. Before harvesting all the seeds from their scales I cut across many seeds and every one of them showed the disheartening situation shown below:

The part of the seed supposed to hold the genetic information is empty. This looks like a spectacular case of "false pregnancy." Apparently fruits and seeds are produced whether fertilization takes place or not. This explains why all the older seeds were rotting. On the Internet I find a page entitled "Cycads From Seed" stating that inside the seed there should be "... a fine coiled filament and attached to the end of that a small object which is the embryo. If the hollow inside the seed is quite empty, the seed is no good." It also says that some cycads produce well formed seeds even when no pollination has taken place. That page is at http://www.pacsoa.org.au/cycads/Articles/germination.html.

In Querétaro we ran into a much smaller cycad with edible cones. Literature I have access to is mute on the edibility of Dioon spinulosa cones, so I ate most of the scale in my hand. The darker yellow part had the texture of raw winter squash, which it slightly tasted like, in the sense that it didn't have much taste at all, though there was a hint of sweetness. The paler yellow part was too hard to bite into. Still, that cone provided a lot of eating for anyone just needing calories. I can imagine that cooked it might be quite good.