Palm impostor

23July2015
The misnamed sago palm is actually a cycad. Cycads date back to the time of dinosaurs and their living relatives trace back to some of the earliest plants so they are sometimes known as living fossils. Unlike palms they grow in a flush of new leaf growth. This is supposed to be annual but my plant hadn’t put out any new growth in the few years since I bought it and then suddenly exploded with new leaves when I was beginning to wonder if it had suffered a personal extinction with only a few bedraggled brown leaves. I was amazed how fast these new green leaves appeared, literally almost overnight. I shot this to focus on just one part of the unfurling leaves throwing the other leaves into soft focus.