Coontie, Arrowroot
Scientific names: Zamia integrifolia, Z. pumila, Z. floridana
Coontie is an evergreen perennial that can get a few feet high and wide. Plants are male or female. It likes sun or shade and soil that is usually moist to soil that experiences very long very dry periods. It is a larval host for the atala butterfly and the echo moth. Many call it a palm, but it is not; it is a cycad. Cycads are an ancient, prehistoric species of plant, and coontie is North America’s only native cycad. Coonties are slow-growing, which is what accounts for their higher price.
Native Americans and settlers pounded and soaked the starch granules from trunks/tubers to make arrowroot starch/a flour for breads, etc. known as sofkee or sago. However, the toxin cyasin must be removed first through a washing and boiling process.
Scientific names: Zamia integrifolia, Z. pumila, Z. floridana
Coontie is an evergreen perennial that can get a few feet high and wide. Plants are male or female. It likes sun or shade and soil that is usually moist to soil that experiences very long very dry periods. It is a larval host for the atala butterfly and the echo moth. Many call it a palm, but it is not; it is a cycad. Cycads are an ancient, prehistoric species of plant, and coontie is North America’s only native cycad. Coonties are slow-growing, which is what accounts for their higher price.
Native Americans and settlers pounded and soaked the starch granules from trunks/tubers to make arrowroot starch/a flour for breads, etc. known as sofkee or sago. However, the toxin cyasin must be removed first through a washing and boiling process.
Scientific names: Zamia integrifolia, Z. pumila, Z. floridana
Coontie is an evergreen perennial that can get a few feet high and wide. Plants are male or female. It likes sun or shade and soil that is usually moist to soil that experiences very long very dry periods. It is a larval host for the atala butterfly and the echo moth. Many call it a palm, but it is not; it is a cycad. Cycads are an ancient, prehistoric species of plant, and coontie is North America’s only native cycad. Coonties are slow-growing, which is what accounts for their higher price.
Native Americans and settlers pounded and soaked the starch granules from trunks/tubers to make arrowroot starch/a flour for breads, etc. known as sofkee or sago. However, the toxin cyasin must be removed first through a washing and boiling process.