Florida Native Plants – How To Grow And Care For Coontie
The Coontie is real special because it is Florida’s only native cycad. Cycads are considered among the most ancient of all plants and are often referred to as living fossils. The cycad plant family is often confused with palms and ferns but they all have a central trunk topped with a whorl of leaves. But while ferns have spores and palms have flowers that graduate into seed fruit, cycads are Gymnosperm that produce cones. Coontie is a woody plant with a thick, soft stem that appears like a trunk but it is mostly made of storage tissue and negligible true wood tissue. The other thing that makes Coontie special is that it is the sole larval food for the Atala butterfly.
Coontie has historically been an important starch source to Native Americans and early settlers. The city of Ft. Lauderdale was given rise to thanks to an early industry around the harvest of Coontie. (more…)
