How to Use cycad in a Sentence

cycad

noun
  • These cycads grow very slowly and can take 50 years to reach 10 feet in height.
    — Marissa Wu, Southern Living, 12 Mar. 2024
  • Check sagos for white cycad scale; control as needed with a natural oil spray.
    — Tom MacCubbin, OrlandoSentinel.com, 31 Mar. 2018
  • Look for ancient cycad species, some of them extinct in the wild, and aloes with dramatic colors and shapes.
    — Helen Purcell Montag, San Diego Union-Tribune, 13 May 2023
  • Grown both as a houseplant and an outdoor plant, this cycad is popular for exotic, palm-like fronds.
    — Steve Bender, Southern Living, 22 Mar. 2021
  • Grass hadn’t even taken off when non-bird dinosaurs were around — herbivores mostly would have eaten ferns, conifers, and cycads.
    — Joshua Rapp Learn, Discover Magazine, 8 Apr. 2025
  • The Olson-Binder garden in Poway features cycads, rare ferns and orchids.
    — Elizabeth Marie Himchak, Pomerado News, 7 Mar. 2018
  • The nodosaur specifically ate the soft leaves of certain ferns and largely neglected common cycad and conifer leaves.
    — Ashley Strickland, CNN, 2 June 2020
  • Despite the common name, sago palm is actually a cycad and produces cones instead of flowers.
    — Marissa Wu, Southern Living, 12 Mar. 2024
  • White cycad scale is one of these that seems to sneak into the plantings to quickly cover trunks, leaves and inflorescence of the sagos to cause their decline.
    — Tom MacCubbin, OrlandoSentinel.com, 3 June 2017
  • But of South Africa’s 38 cycad species, 25 are threatened with extinction.
    — The Economist, 19 Oct. 2017
  • Discovering a female Wood’s cycad, however, is like finding a needle in a haystack.
    — Sarah Kuta, Smithsonian Magazine, 25 July 2024
  • This year, there are staples like firebush, rare natives like pearlberry, and rather hard-to-find cycads like Encephalartoshildebrandtii.
    — Kenneth Setzer, miamiherald, 6 Apr. 2018
  • College analyzed cycad seeds and focused on a compound in them, BMAA.
    — Kathleen McAuliffe, Discover Magazine, 21 July 2011
  • Several cycad species have very low genetic diversity, as do the insects that pollinate them, like weevils.
    — Ed Yong, Discover Magazine, 20 Oct. 2011
  • Imagine a landscape where redwood-like metasequoias towered over the hills; slim alder-like trees, ginkgos and vines dwelled at the forest margins; and lush ferns, cycads and horsetails packed the swamps.
    — Kate Siber, Alaska Dispatch News, 19 Aug. 2017
  • For extreme collectors, rarity only makes a cycad more desirable.
    — The Economist, 19 Oct. 2017
  • The flight back is just as scenic, soaring over the Matthews mountain range — a remote and inaccessible landmark filled with dramatic cliffs, cycad forests, and flowing rivers.
    — Shaun Stanley, Travel + Leisure, 5 Nov. 2024
  • Guam’s coconut rhinoceros beetles have started burrowing into cycad trees.
    — Rafil Kroll-Zaidi, Harpers Magazine, 5 Jan. 2021
  • The genomes, from three fern species and a cycad, one of the oldest kinds of seed-bearing plants, show genes key to making seeds are the same as those in the spore-producing machinery of ferns, which emerged tens of millions of years earlier.
    — Byelizabeth Pennisi, science.org, 22 Sep. 2022
  • However, all cycads contain at least three toxins affecting animals, including people.
    — Kenneth Setzer, miamiherald, 14 June 2018
  • Vast, grassy plains only spread about 36 million years later, so much of the low-growing groundcover of the Late Cretaceous was ferns, cycads and similar plants.
    — Riley Black, Smithsonian Magazine, 10 Mar. 2023
  • Throughout Palomar there are plantings of hardwoods, succulents, proteas, cycads, pollinator plants, rosebushes, palms, bamboos and legumes.
    — Pam Kragen, San Diego Union-Tribune, 11 Aug. 2019
  • As dinosaurs lumbered through the humid cycad forests of ancient South America 180 million years ago, primeval lizards scurried, unnoticed, beneath their feet.
    — Kurt Schwenk, The Conversation, 16 June 2021
  • Paleontologists believe that hungry dinosaurs may have also helped cycads proliferate.
    — Sarah Kuta, Smithsonian Magazine, 25 July 2024
  • Vendors will be selling orchids, carnivorous plants, bromeliads, cacti, cycads, palms, epiphyllum, tillandsia, terrarium plants, begonias and tree ferns.
    — Jeanette Marantos, Los Angeles Times, 1 June 2024
  • In addition to necessitating an understanding of seasonality and growth cycles, bush foods may require unique processing and preparation, such as wild yams and cycad seeds, both of which are toxic unless first leached in water.
    — Jessica Wynne Lockhart, Smithsonian Magazine, 4 Aug. 2023
  • Some plants, such as cycads in the Ancient Forest, remained relatively unscathed thanks to their naturally waxy surface, while other flowers’ dark pigmentation provided protection from the sun.
    — Sara Cardine, latimes.com, 12 July 2018
  • Sago palms, also known as cycads, cardboard palms, fern palms and coontie plants, hail from tropical and subtropical areas but have become popular ornamental plants in the United States in the past 10 to 20 years.
    — Kim Campbell Thornton, sacbee, 14 Mar. 2018
  • The selection of nearly 500 plant species was guided by their capacity to contribute to this therapeutic atmosphere, with a particular focus on unique and rare specimens, such as the resort’s extensive collection of palms and cycads.
    — Christine Chitnis, Condé Nast Traveler, 16 Aug. 2024
  • Among those special single specimen plants, most installed near the house, are several prehistoric and unusual plant varieties, including the sago palm; cycads, including Dioon, Encephalartos and Zamia; and the Queensland bottle tree.
    — Nicole Sours Larson, San Diego Union-Tribune, 12 Aug. 2023

Some of these examples are programmatically compiled from various online sources to illustrate current usage of the word 'cycad.' Any opinions expressed in the examples do not represent those of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback about these examples.

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