The conservancy that my family and I are developing in West Delray Beach, FL, has one of the largest and best-curated palm tree collections in the world, as well as a growing collection of outdoor sculptures, a traditionally styled Japanese tea house, a stock of African cycads, and dozens of other exotic plants and trees.

Here’s one of the cycads:

Mombasa Cycad

Binomial name: Encephalartos hildebrandtii

Cycads are ancient plants that existed long before dinosaurs. The Mombasa Cycad is a large, tough plant with leaves that can reach 10 feet in length. All cycads are dioecious, meaning a plant is either male or female. In the female Mombasa, the cone and seeds are very pale, almost white. In the male, they are yellow. From the photo, it looks like this one is a male.

For more information about Paradise Palms, click here.