I’m the proud owner of a Madagascan cycad. He or she (I won’t know until s/he gets older) gets an annual decking with baubles at Christmas, but spends most of the rest of the year getting in the way of the television.

Cycads look a lot like palms, but rather than producing flowers and fruits, they make cones and bear fruitless naked seeds. This hints at their origins. They are much more closely related to pine trees and other gymnosperms, than to flowering plants like palms.