Cycas balansae
A small cycad with a mostly underground stem from the mountain rainforests of northern Vietnam and southern China. It grows in the forest understory, so it wants brighter shade than most cycads, warm wet summers and a cooler, drier winter. Rare in cultivation and listed as Endangered.
Where it grows wild
Understory of dense, humid evergreen mountain forest, growing on the forest floor with its stem largely below ground.
The measured sites lie at about 560–1,570 m; the literature gives no firm altitude range.
🔒 Growing it like that
The wild conditions above, turned into targets for a shelf, a tent or a greenhouse. The full profile has:
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Profiles are drafts built from measured range and climate and from published sources; each section carries its own confidence in the app. Photo from Wikimedia Commons, used under its CC BY-SA 4.0 licence, unmodified.