Editing Cycas macrocarpa

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[[File:Cycas_macrocarpa.jpg|frame|Figure 1. ''C. macrocarpa'']]
[[File:Cycas_macrocarpa03.jpg|frame|Figure 3. ''C. macrocarpa'' immature seeds.]]
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===Distribution & Habitat:===
Rain forest ridges in southern Thailand and peninsular Malaysia.

===Description:===
A tall, attractive cycad to 12m tall, with glossy green leaves to 3.2m long.
Leaves are noticably blue-green when immature.

===Culture:===
Warm, sheltered and moist, but well drained.

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[[File:Cycas_macrocarpa02.jpg|frame|Figure 2. ''C. macrocarpa'']]
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===The Rediscovery of ===
A recent trip to Thailand gave an opportunity to study the
cycads of that country in their habitats. This trip was
greatly assisted by Mr. Kampon Tansacha, proprietor of the
Nong Nooch Orchid Wonderland tourist village. Kampon is also
a well known landscaper in Thailand, and a palm and cycad
enthusiast.

It was during our visit to southern Thailand that one of our
most interesting finds was made. We were taken by Mr. Poonsak
Vatcharakorn, a plant and seed collector employed by the Nong
Nooch village, to see a cycad growing around Sungai Padi near
Sungai Kolok in the far south of the country. A very large
and robust, tall cycad with very dark green, broad, sometimes
undulating pinnae was seen in several village gardens in the
district. We then saw several large remnant plants growing in
old rubber plantations in the same area. The plantations had
passed their productive life, and were being cleared for
replanting. Unfortunately, the newer style of planting meant
deep ploughing and removal of all vegetation, including the
big old cycads. These cycads originally occurred in primary
closed forest (rainforest), on well-drained, often sloping,
deep sandy clay-loam soils, and are said to still occur on
the less disturbed ridges in southern Thailand and northern
Malaysia.

After about half a day with these plants, we travelled to
Narathiwat to contrast the Thai plants known as
''[[Cycas rumphii]]'', still occurring naturally along the coast
in that district. These were also robust plants with broad
pinnae, but proved to be quite different in many other
characters. A simple key below lists the differences.

<ol><li>Cataphylls triangular, to 70 mm long, indumentum short,
</li></ol>
grey to pale yellowbrown, closely appressed; new growth
bright green; pinnae mid-green when mature, broad-based
(5-8 mm wide at the base), with a broad, low, yellow
midrib above:
''Cycas rumphii''

<ol><li>Cataphylls narrowly triangular, to 110 mm long,
</li></ol>
indumentum thick and woolly, rusty red-brown; new growth
distinctly blue; pinnae dark green when  mature,
narrow-based (2-4 mm wide at the base), with a narrow,
raised, green midrib above:
''Cycas macrocarpa''
Although no seeds or sporophylls were seen on the forest
species, an extensive search turned up two old seed-cases
attached to seedlings about 3 or 4 years old. The seeds were
large and of an unusual oblong shape, about 60 x 35 mm in
size. They also showed no trace of the spongy endocarp so
characteristic of the ''C. rumphii'' group, and clearly
present in seeds of the plants at Narathiwat.

Poonsak recalled visiting the Sungai Padi area some 4 years
earlier, collecting seeds and taking photographs. On his
return home after our trip to the south, he located the
photographs, which showed a very distinctive megasporophyll
shape and large, oblong seeds. These plants were clearly not
''[[Cycas rumphii]]'', but what were they?
After my visit to Thailand, I continued on to England and
spent some time in the herbarium of the Royal Botanic Gardens
at Kew, trying to track down types for a number of old names.
One specimen of note was No. 6361 from the East India Company
herbarium, with a label reading 'Pakoo Galouwe/Cycas sp./Crew

<dl><dd> near Tabong' and the words 'macrocarpa Griff. / Not. iv, p,
</dd></dl>
12' added later. The specimen in the main herbarium was of
leaf portions only, but there was an old note on the sheet
that stated 'fruit in mus.'. The 'fruit' were eventually
tracked down in the Museum of Economic Botany, in another
building 200 metres away. This proved to be seeds and
sporophylls, and clearly matched the seeds from Thailand and
Poonsak's photographs. The locality given is now known as
Keru, in Melaka State, Malaysia.

This was also the specimen referred to in the description of
''Cycas macrocarpa''
by William Griffith (1810-1845), a British colonial physician
with the East India Company, and later botanist and
superintendent of the Calcutta Botanic Gardens. It also
matches an illustration he made while at the Calcutta Botanic
Gardens. He noted that the specimen was collected by Dutchman
J.B. Westerhout, Assistant Resident of Malacca, in September
1842. Griffith did not publish his notes and drawings while
living, and his work was bequeathed .t o the East India
Company. It was compiled by John McLelland and published by
the colonial govemment of Bengal in Calcutta in 1854.
Although there was nothing to indicate that the illustration
belonged to the description of
''C. macrocarpa'',
the compiler added a note to suggest that this may be the
case, and it clearly matches the description and the specimen
at Kew.

Although this publication was fully technically correct, it
was ignored by all contemporaneous and subsequent cycad
students. Foremost student of the Cycadales of that era,
F.A.W. Miquel, overlooked the publication of the name
''C. macrocarpa''
until 1868, where he briefly mentioned it as a species
unknown to him and doubtfully distinct. Alphonse de Candolle
and his father collated, partly wrote and published a
complete account of the known flora of the world over the
period 1824-1876. He treated the cycads in 1856, including
the name ''C. macrocarpa''
as a doubtful species, and noting that it was not known to
him. In the Kew herbarium, the specimens collected by
Westerhout were labelled ''C. rumphii'' and left there.
Hooker and Jackson in 1893 placed ''C. macrocarpa''
into the synonymy of ''C. rumphii'' in 'Index Kewensis', a
monumental publication endeavouring to list ALL published
plant names and synonymies from the time of Linnaeus until
1885. There it has remained until now.
Although apparently fairly common in the ridge forests of
southern Thailand and Peninsular Malaysia, ''C. macrocarpa''
has been rarely collected. Henry Ridley (Director of
Singapore Botanic Gardens, 1901-1912) published the flora of
the Malay Peninsula between 1922 and 1925, in which he noted
'hill forest forms of ''C. rumphii'' may be different'.
Tem Smitinand later recognised the presence of 2 distinct
taxa in southern Thailand in his treatment of
''Cycas for the Flora of Thailand''. He correctly treated
one as ''C. rumphii''. but wrongly applied the name
''C. circinalis'' to the plants we now know to be
''C. macrocarpa''.
A photograph in habitat was published in 'Nature Malaysiana'
as ''Cycas sp.''. Taman Negara (vol. 17, p- 47, 1992).

Although this species has been poorly known and collected, a
few plants have turned up in odd places. Photographs sent by
Roy Osborne of an unusual plant growing in the Durban Botanic
Gardens in South Africa showed it to be ''C. macrocarpa''.
Some of the seeds collected by Poonsak made their way to the
USA, and a few seedlings were recently seen in collections in
Florida. This species is a beautiful and dramatic plant, and
certainly deserves to be more widely grown.

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[[File:Cycas_macrocarpaB.jpg|frame|Figure 1. A large ''C. macrocarpa'' in an old rubber planatation.]]
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[[File:Cycas_macrocarpaB02.jpg|frame|Figure 2. ''C. macrcocarpa'' ex-Melesia, Durban Botanic Gardens.]]
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[[File:Cycas_macrocarpaB04.jpg|frame|Figure 3. Plant in a rubber plantation with Poonsak]]
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===References:===
De Candolle, A. R (1868) Cycadaceae in
''Prodr. Syst. Nat. & Reg. Veg.'' 16(2): 522-548.
Griffith, W. (1854a) ''lcones plantarum asiaticum'' 4
(Calcutta).<br/>
Griffith, W. (1854b) ''Notulae ad plantas asiaticas'' 4
(Calcutta).<br/>
Hooker, J.D. & Jackson, B.D. (1893) ''Index Kewensis'' (Oxford).
Miquel, EA.W. (1868) Nouveaux materiaux pour servir a la
connaissance des Cycadees. ''Arch Neerl. Sci. Exact. Nat.''
3(5): 193-254, 403-425.<br/>
Ridley, H.A. (1925) ''Flora of the Malay Peninsula'' 5 (London).
Smitinand, T. (1971) The genus Cycas Linn.
(Cycadaceae) in Thailand. ''Nat. Hist. Bull. Siam Soc.''
24: 163-175.

===Contributed by: ===
Tan Chin Tong (Figure 1,2&3)<br/>


===External Links:===
[https://www.cycadlist.org/taxon.php?Taxon_ID=157 World List], 
[https://www.iucnredlist.org/details/full/42057/0 IUCN],
[https://www.jstor.org/action/doBasicSearch?Query=Cycas+macrocarpa JSTOR],
[https://www.trebrown.com/plant_info.php?species=Cycas+macrocarpa Trebrown]
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[https://www.google.com/search?q=%22Cycas+macrocarpa%22&amp;num=10&amp;sa=Google+Search Google],
[https://images.google.com/images?q=%22Cycas+macrocarpa%22&amp;hl=en&amp;btnG=Google+Search GoogleImages],
[https://www.flickr.com/search/?q=Cycas+macrocarpa Flickr],
<p>
[[Category:Cycas|macrocarpa]]
[[Category:Cycad|Cycas_macrocarpa]]