stem subterranean, very densely woolly-villous; leaves shining green, usually few in a crown, slightly arcuate, up to 9 ft. or more long; petiole, rhachis and leaflets densely woolly-villous when young, becoming glabrous or nearly so; leaflets numerous, the lower ones gradually and markedly reduced to prickles, the middle and upper ones broadly linear, pungent-pointed, usually with a few small ascending teeth and often 2–3-dentate at the apex, up to 8 in. long and 3/4 in. broad, the broadest about 25-nerved, nerves slightly prominent below; male cones yellowish, conspicuously pedunculate, slender, cylindric, slightly tapering to the top, about 2 ft. long and 3–4 in. in diam.; scales markedly peltate, irregularly rhomboid at the top, about 1 in. across, glabrous, rugose when dry with undulate margins; female cones pedunculate, more ellipsoid or subovoid, shorter and about twice as thick as the male, brilliant yellow when ripe; scales overlapping downwards, rhomboid at the top, the lower margin more or less irregularly toothed; seeds red, about 1 1/4 in. long, nearly as broad as long, oblong-ellipsoid. null
