Slow-growing, evergreen, long-lived, mostly unbranched palm-like plants having trunks with persistent frond bases. Leaves spirally arranged in crown. Leaflets linear, flattened, leathery with a single midrib, lower ones often spiny. Plants unisexual. Male and female cones different in shape and size. Male cones more or less oblong with numerous spore-bearing sacs. Females hardly cone-like but resembling a dense, hairy cluster of fronds, each with 2-8 ovoid seeds that are flattened in section: the growing tip continues from the centre of these fronds.
1 genus with c. 40 species.
Leaflets coiled at first and with a single prominent midrib; female reproductive structures frond-like with seeds attached towards the base and growth continuing from their centre in the crown of the plant.
Source: (1995). Cycadaceae. In: . Horticultural Flora of South-eastern Australia. Volume 1, Ferns, conifers & their allies. The identification of garden and cultivated plants. University of New South Wales Press.