A HORTICULTURIST at Kew Gardens acted as match-maker for two rare prehistoric plants last week, after bringing together a male cycad at the Gardens’ famous Palm House, and a female of the species in Bristol.

Wesley Shaw from the gardens, heard that a female cycad at the Wildwalk-At-Bristol garden centre had been ‘coning’, producing bright red cones which grow once every few years, showing it was ready for fertilisation.

By coincidence Kew had a male of the same species which had begun to cone in July with the first cone an impressive half a metre long and ready for pollen extraction. Wesley realised this would be a great opportunity to take pollen from Kew’s male plant and fertilise Bristol’s female.

When the male cone starts shedding its pollen, it elongates and the scales separate, releasing the pollen grains. At this stage the cone is cut from the plant and placed on a sheet of paper so that the pollen can be collected over a couple of days.

The pollen is then mixed with distilled water and squirted into the female cone with a pipette or a turkey baster. The female cone is only receptive for a short period when the scales slightly separate. If pollination is successful the female cone will swell up and expand. It can take up to eight months for the seeds to develop at which point the cone will fall apart releasing the seeds.

Wesley Shaw commented: ‘‘Pollinating these cycads is quite a tricky business but we are confident it will work. It’s very fortunate to have Bristol’s female cycad coning at the same time as we usually have to collect the pollen and freeze it until a female plant cones, sometimes years later, when the pollen has become less viable.’’ Cycads first appeared in the Triassic period, 245 million years ago and provided over 20% of the world’s vegetation during the Jurassic period, when the humid climate helped them flourish. Today many cycads are threatened with extinction, only surviving as small isolated populations in Central America, South Africa and Australia. They have suffered from habitat loss due to agriculture and urban development as they are very slow growing. Cycads can live for hundreds of years and Kew’s male specimen is about 80 years old.