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| The Cycad Pages
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World List of Cycads
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K.D. Hill & D.W. Stevenson
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| Cycas maconochiei
| Photo Ken Hill |
A comprehensive, accurate and up-to-date listing of all
accepted cycad names and their synonyms
Enter a name to search:
Or go to the listings of species by genera:
The World List of Cycads is the outcome of
the combined work of John Hendricks,
Ken Hill,
Roy Osborne and
Dennis Stevenson over the past two decades.
Our first "World List" was published in Encephalartos, the Journal of the
Cycad Society of South Africa
(Osborne and Hendricks, 1985)
with minor amendments in a supplementary list in a subsequent issue of the same journal
(Osborne and Hendricks, 1986).
Several updates have followed as new discoveries and changes in taxonomy
and in outlook, especially in the genera
Cycas, Encephalartos, Macrozamia and Zamia, made the
previous lists obsolete. These have been presented at the various International
Conferences on Cycad Biology
(Stevenson, Osborne and Hendricks, 1990;
Stevenson and Osborne 1993A;
Stevenson, Osborne and Hill, 1995;
Stevenson, Osborne and Hill, in press)
and elsewhere
(Stevenson and Osborne 1993B).
The rapid recent changes in the taxonomy of the cycads have
been somewhat unexpected,
with almost half of the now accepted cycad species being named in the
last 20 years (see graph). This has necessitated
frequent updates to the World List, and the online version will now
make this changing taxonomy immediately available to all.
The lists as published gave the valid names of all known extant cycads at the
times of final editing. Compilation was alphabetical by family, according to
Stevenson (1992).
The online version has been expanded to include all known synonyms
and details of typification of all validly published names. The database
at present is kept as a text file and searched using PERL scripts.
All author's names are abbreviated in accordance with
Brummit and Powell (1992).
journals are abbreviated according to the
Botanico-Periodicum-Huntianum
standard and other material follows the style of
Stafleu and Cowan (1976-1983).
