Zamia furfuracea

This species is known from four widespread localities (Zamia furfuracea sensu lato) and each consists of hundreds/thousands of individuals and some active recruitment. However, it is very much a range-restricted species whose coastal habitat is under threat.

In the 1970's truckloads of Z. furfuracea were collected in the sand dunes near Alvarado, Veracruz and brought to the US, mostly through Texas and California. For many years, these were the more commonly seen forms in cultivation. But the leaflets suggest that that population is a hybrid swarm between the more coastal form found in littoral forest and on cliffs from Montepio toward Coatzacoalcos, Veracruz, which has broader, more rounded leaflets and Zamia loddigesii, which occurs throughout the region in scattered populations in various kinds of habitats. The sand dune population was nearly extirpated and throughout the 1980's, the round-leaflet form became the mainstay of the horticultural trade and was not only collected, but (to the benefit of the wild subpopulations) propagated heavily from seed to the point that the wild plants are no longer poached because there are so many hundreds of thousands of plants now cultivated world-wide.