Natal Grass Cycad

The Natal Grass Cycad, Stangeria eriopus, is a long-lived evergreen cycad endemic to southern Africa and the only species in the genus Stangeria and the family Stangeriaceae. Its fern-like, feathered leaves grow twenty five centimeters to two meters long and are pinnately veined, a feature that sets it apart from every other cycad, with the leaf stalk making up roughly a third to a half of the total leaf length and young leaves briefly covered in short gray hairs. It occurs along a narrow coastal strip about eight hundred kilometers long across the KwaZulu and Cape coastal forest mosaics of South Africa and southern Mozambique, growing from grassland to closed forest in sun or shade, generally in sandy, slightly acidic soil within fifty kilometers of the sea but no closer than two or three kilometers. It is classified as Vulnerable on the IUCN Red List and listed under CITES Appendix I, threatened by habitat loss and unsustainable harvesting for traditional medicine.