Cycads: the primeval plants getting rarer – and harder to protect

Here before the dinosaurs, plants now face extinction due to illegal trade and vanishing tropical forests

Cycads are the most threatened group of plants in the world. These ancient plants date back about 280m years, before the age of the dinosaurs, and they look primeval, with a rugged chunky trunk rising into a crown of stiff feathery leaves.

They are disappearing as their tropical forest habitats are rapidly vanishing, and they also face extinction from an illegal multimillion-pound global trade in wild cycads. The rarer they become, the more their value increases, with some individual specimens selling for millions of pounds each.