Notes from the land · August 2026

Coontie in the Parking Lot

Colored-pencil sketch of a potted coontie with an open cone of bright orange seeds and handwritten text that says beware poisonous seeds — Florida’s only native cycad. The seeds are the bright orange ones.

Coontie is a low mound of glossy, feathered leaves, two or three feet tall, sitting on a thick stem that mostly lives underground. Florida’s only native cycad. Zamia integrifolia. It looks a little like a fern that decided not to go brown in January.

What It Looks Like

Stiff fronds. Dark green leaflets. A rusty brown cone in the middle of a female plant, and when that cone splits, the seeds show. They are bright orange, about the size of a kidney bean, glossy enough that a kid would pick one up.

Why It Shows Up in Parking Lots

It does so well that it is very popular. You see it in parking lots and along sidewalks, in the beds an HOA will actually sign off on. UF/IFAS treats it as a foundation plant and a massed planting, three to five feet apart, sun or pine shade, most soils. High drought tolerance, moderate salt, cold hardy down through zone 8b, which around Jacksonville means a hard freeze is not a story. Once it is in, it rarely wants a hose.

Developers like a plant that looks finished the day it goes in the ground and then stays that way.

The Seeds

The seeds are poisonous, and so is the raw root. One or two can be a real problem for a dog, or a kid who puts things in their mouth.

So what do you do with a plant like that.

UF/IFAS’s note for Northeast Florida is to plant it away from small paws and little fingers. As we have been cultivating it, we have been careful on where it is stored and who has access to it.

It is also the host plant for the Atala butterfly. The caterpillars can strip a plant. A healthy one grows the leaves back the next season.

We grow it because it is from here and it holds up.