Many of These Plants Older Than Dinosaurs Face Extinction

You can look at a cycad and go back in time. The rough, stout trunk rising into a spray of stiff, palm-like leaves can feel better suited to the Late Cretaceous than our modern world, as if a horned dinosaur might amble up to shear off a mouthful of the tough vegetation. cycads have been around for a long time, but they are not fossils. Cycads have undergone dramatic changes through their history, and it may be up to us to save them. Many cycad species are in danger of disappearing because of humans, despite surviving multiple mass extinctions. We are altering the habitats where these resilient plants grow, but a growing trade in rare and endangered cycads is threatening to wipe out plants that have flourished for millions of years.

The earliest dinosaurs had cycads. Around 280 million years ago, in what is now Brazil's Paran E1 Basin, there was a plant with a tough outer coating. The oldest known cycad is known as Iratinia australis. cycads did not meet immediate success. The plants survived the worst mass extinction of all time at the end of the Permian Period, 252 million years ago.

cycads might not seem like a different plant than a small palm tree. But appearance can be deceiving. Gymnosperms are the broad family of plants that includes conifers. Cycads have cones that hold their seeds and are similar to a pine. Some cycads are small, growing a few inches off the ground, while others can tower over your head. The pineapple-like shape, frond-like leaves and cones have been a mark of cycads for a long time.

Between 200 and 66 million years ago, cycads were plentiful and were used by many dinosaurs. Dinosaurs may have helped the spread of cycads by eating the fruits of the plants. The creatures may have dropped cycads in new places to aid their growth. cycads have been used as window-dressing in paleoart for a long time, but they have been much more responsive than anyone else.

cycads have been responding to changes in Earth's climate and evolving rapidly to keep up with our changing planet according to a Royal Botanic Garden study. Most of the 300 living species of cycad are younger than twelve million years old. The cycads that lived in the forests of Allosaurus are not the same cycads we are seeing today. After the mass extinction of the Age of Dinosaurs, cycads burst forward again, perhaps thriving in tropical environments with just the right combination of heat and rain. The evolution of cycads has ebbed and flowed according to climate and shifts between wet and dry seasons. cycads grow in a broad range of habitats and come in many shapes, a testament to how these plants have kept changing with the times.

cycads are the most threatened group of organisms assessed to date. More than half of the cycad species are listed on the Red List, a catalog of species that are close to extinction. Plants are finding it hard to hang on because of us, and that figure represents dozens and dozens of species.

Cycads are under pressure due to a number of reasons, and our impact on these plants has often been direct. The use of traditional medicine is believed to be the reason why cycads of the protected Encephalartos were found in South Africa. Many cycads are exported from countries like South Africa to fuel a private collector's market where increasing rarity is seen as a way to ramp up a stolen cycad's value.

Lopez-Gallego says that threats from unsustainable human activities can change populations and habitats at a very fast pace.

Humans are cutting back these ancient plants even faster than the cycads did. Lopez-Gallego notes that there are efforts to save cycads in Africa, the Americas and Asia. In places like Uganda, researchers and people who live there have formed partnerships to help preserve a place where cycads grow. cycads can be cultivated and reintroduced to places where they vanished thanks to collections-based research. Cycads were able to survive for over 300 million years without us, but now they need our help.