The coontie, an unusual Florida native plant, often mistaken for a fern or palm, is a cycad — a “living fossil.” These primitive plants were a dominant form of plant life during the age of dinosaurs. Coontie provides food in exchange for pollination services from many species of insects to include beetles, butterflies and moths. Seeds are a source of food for mockingbirds, blue jays and other birds and many small animals.
The coontie’s underground root-like stem is more properly called a caudex. It contains both starch and a water soluble toxin, cycasin. The indigenous people and later the European explorers and colonists used an extended process to extract an edible starch from the coontie’s large caudex.
The coontie is native to most of peninsular Florida and southeastern Georgia east of the Apalachicola River. Its natural habitat is dominated by pines and well-drained, sandy or loamy soils. The U.S. Department of Agriculture rates the coontie as a hardy species, meaning it should survive a minimum winter temperature of 15 degrees. This herbaceous plant typically grows from 1 to 3 feet high, while forms in the Ocala National Forest can be as much as 4 to 5 feet high. The coontie has stiff, featherlike leaves, up to 3 feet in length, which are attached to a thick, shortened stem. New leaves uncurl from the top of this stem.…show more content… Coontie leaves have slender leaflets, 3 to 6 inches long and attached like the pinnae of a feather along the stalk. The dark green leaflets are stiff and
