Seed producing vascular plants of the division Cycadophyta recorded from South Africa
This listing contains taxa of plants in the division
Cycadophyta, recorded from
South Africa. Cycads /ˈsaɪkædz/ are
seed plants with a very long fossil history that were formerly more abundant and more diverse than they are today. They typically have a stout and woody (
ligneous)
trunk with a
crown of large, hard and stiff,
evergreen leaves. They usually have
pinnate leaves. The species are
dioecious, therefore the individual plants of a species are either male or female. Cycads vary in size from having trunks only a few centimeters to several meters tall. They typically grow very slowly and live very long, with some specimens known to be as much as 1,000 years old. Because of their superficial resemblance, they are sometimes mistaken for
palms or
ferns, but they are not closely related to either group.
Cycads are
gymnosperms (naked seeded), meaning their
unfertilized seeds are open to the air to be directly fertilized by
pollination, as contrasted with
angiosperms, which have enclosed seeds with more complex fertilization arrangements. Cycads have very specialized
pollinators, usually a specific species of
beetle. They have been reported to
fix nitrogen in association with various
cyanobacteria living in the roots (the "coralloid" roots).[1] Cycads all over the world are in decline, with four species on the brink of extinction and seven species have fewer than 100 plants left in the wild.[2]
23,420 species of vascular plant have been recorded in South Africa, making it the sixth most species-rich country in the world and the most species-rich country on the African continent. Of these, 153 species are considered to be threatened.[3] Nine
biomes have been described in South Africa:
Fynbos, Succulent
Karoo,
desert,
Nama Karoo,
grassland,
savanna,
Albany thickets, the
Indian Ocean coastal belt, and
forests.[4]