A visit to Kew Gardens beckoned last Saturday. I always love the glasshouses: the Temperate House for the unusual conifers and the Princess Of Wales Conservatory for the incredible fern sections, but it's the Palm House which was most exciting. My favourite cycad of all time, Encephalartos horridus, the ferocious blue cycad (the reasons for this should be obvious), was in fine form:
But wait, what's this I see?
It's a pup on the E. horridus!!
In fact, we counted four of them:
I would LOVE it if these were ever commercially available, but I think there is a greater chance of an asteroid destroying Earth than of me getting a CITES-protected cycad. So I had to make do with photos, and a bit of a feel:
At this stage, the pups were still really soft - even the ends didn't have sharp spikes on them. I suspect this was how dinosaurs ate similar specimens. I don't think, if I was a dinosaur, that I'd have attempted to eat them otherwise!
But wait, what's this I see?
It's a pup on the E. horridus!!
In fact, we counted four of them:
I would LOVE it if these were ever commercially available, but I think there is a greater chance of an asteroid destroying Earth than of me getting a CITES-protected cycad. So I had to make do with photos, and a bit of a feel:
At this stage, the pups were still really soft - even the ends didn't have sharp spikes on them. I suspect this was how dinosaurs ate similar specimens. I don't think, if I was a dinosaur, that I'd have attempted to eat them otherwise!
0 comments:
Post a Comment