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| Coontie is a popular native for parking lots like this hospital lot in Jacksonville, because it doesn't need trimming to maintain this height. |
Coontie (Zamia integrifolia), a beautiful & unique plant native to most of Florida & some Caribbean islands, has an interesting history of over exploitation & the near extinction of the Atala butterfly (Eumaeus atala) that depends on this plant as its larval food source. Today, coontie is widely planted in all of Florida because it's attractive, drought-tolerant, salt-spray tolerant, plus it grows in poor soil & does not need trimming.
Coontie is a Cycad
Cycads are ancient plants that have a fossil record that shows that they have not changed much in the last 68 million years. They are gymnosperms, which means naked seed. (Pines are also gymnosperms.) Angiosperms, the flowering plants with their enclosed ovaries and their pollinators such as bees & butterflies developed much later.
Cycads bear pollen and ovaries in fleshy cone-like structures at ground level on separate male and female plants. They are pollinated by beetles and the coonties use heat in the cones at different times to attract the beetles to the male cones and then to travel to the heat in the female cones. This is called thermogenesis.
Cycads are the only group of gymnosperms that fix nitrogen. They have a symbiotic relationship a cyanobacteria microbes which react with the nitrogen gas in the air, which plants cannot absorb, to form a chemical which can be absorbed by plants as a fertilizer. This means that they can grow well in poor soil since they build their own source of nitrogen, a required nutrient for good growth. The cyanobacteria are found in special "coralloid" (coral-shaped) roots. (Bean family plants, the legumes, fix nitrogen using Rhizobium bacteria & alders fix nitrogen using Actinomycetes. Read my Alder article.)
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| Atala butterfly (Eumaeus atala) lays its eggs only on coonties so the caterpillars can extract the toxins and will safer from predation. |
Coonties are Toxic
Cycasin is the main toxin in coonties and if ingested, could be fatal to humans, pets, or livestock. However, coontie is the only larval food source the Atala hairstreak butterfly (Eumaeus atala). So the Atala caterpillars have adapted to tolerate this toxin, which makes the both the caterpillars and adult butterflies toxic and unpalatable to predators. The bright coloration is a warning to the potential predators. (The monarch butterflies (Danaus plexippus) have a similar relationship by absorbing the bitter toxins of milkweeds (Asclepias spp.) to ward off predators.)
Despite the toxins, the coonties' fat underground stems were used by indigenous peoples, including Tequesta & Mayaimi Indians, and later the Seminole Indians & the Maroons to produce a starch. The cycasin is water soluble, so root was typically prepared by grinding (macerating) it and then soaking in water, fermenting, and then drying. The dried powder was then used as a flour. The name "coontie" comes from the Seminole word conti hateka (or kuntē-hvtke), which translates to "white root" or "white bread."
Commercial production of the starch (using roots gathered from wild plants) occurred in South Florida, from the 1830s until the 1920s. The starch was sold as "Florida arrowroot." Some of the facilities in South Florida processed 10 tons per day. The early settlers in South Florida could make a reasonable amount of money by digging up the coonties from the wild. This flour was widely used to make Animal Crackers until the Food and Drug Administration banned the practice in 1925 out of fear of the toxins in inadequately processed flour. By that time, though, almost all of the slow-growing coontie had been harvested from Florida.
| True Arrowroot (Maranta arundinacea) is native from Mexico to Brazil and its root is a source of easy-to-digest starch. It can be fed to infants, invalids, and those allergic to wheat. It's edible raw or cooked and does not contain toxins, and in fact, the starch from this plant can be used internally against ingested poison or externally to extract poison from a wound or from poisoned arrows, which is how it earned its common name. Unlike coontie, it's grown as a crop plant. |
When the coonties disappeared from the Florida landscape by the 1930s, so did Atala butterflies. They were not even placed on the endangered species list when it became law in 1973 because they were thought to be extinct. Then in 1979, Roger Hammer, a botanist & naturalist, was walking around on Virginia Key near Miami when he spotted a wild coontie plant covered with red caterpillars with yellow spots on their sides feeding on the leaves. He wasn't sure what they were, so he collected some, brought them home and reared them. When the adult butterflies emerged he was surprised and made sure that they were indeed the Atala butterfly. He raised more and shared them with nearby botanic gardens and also released some into the Everglades. Basically, Roger saved this lovely little butterfly from extinction.
Coonties are now widely used in both commercial and residential landscapes
Because coonties are long-lived, attractive, drought-tolerant, salt-spray tolerant and because they are easy to grow in poor soil, they have become quite a popular choice for both commercial and home landscapes. It's particularly well suited for parking lots because it does not need trimming to maintain visibility for the drivers. Take note of the lead photo that I took in a hospital parking lot. Because of its fat underground stems, most weeds do not become a problem around dense groupings of coonties, but it is not totally maintenance-free because vigorous vines such as cat briar (Smilax spp.), Virginia creeper (Parthenocissus quinquefolia), Carolina jessamine (Gelsemium sempervirens) and others will need to be removed every few years so they don't take over the coonties.
The coontie is the only cycad that's native to Florida, but other cycads are often used in Florida landscapes. The cardboard palm (Zamia furfuracea), native to southeastern Mexico, is widely planted in South Florida. Another cycad that is widely planted in all of Florida is the sago palm (Cycas revoluta), which is native to southern Japan. Of course, neither of these are palms, which are flowering plants, but many cycads have leaves that look like palm fronds.
In our yard...
More than 10 years ago, I bought a pot of coonties with 3 or 4 plants and I planted them off the end of the screened porch to replace the over-grown podocarpus that had been planted by the previous owners. My thought was that this way we'd have a clear view from the porch into the wooded area next to the house. After a few years, the netted chain ferns (Woodwardia areolata) naturally filled in that mostly shady bed and the coonties basically became invisible there because their foliage is so similar. Also, a female coontie had spawned a bunch of babies.
I moved most of the adult coontie plants out in front of the house along the driveway for greater visibility and I potted up all those babies in 2 large pots to take to our FNPS chapter's native plant sale that year. A native plant vendor who was also selling plants at the event bought both of my pots, which was good because they are somewhat expensive in the native plant trade because they grow so slowly.
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| Self-planted coontie seedlings. | There were a lot (!) of seedlings. |
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| Coontie seedlings have the beginnings of their famous fat underground stems. |
I planted the seedlings in two big pots to take to a native plant sale. They were scooped up by a native plant grower at the sale. |
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| Coontie seeds are borne on female plants and are poisonous to pets & kids. Photo by Roger Hammer. |
Male cones on one of my plants. |
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| This coontie had been in place for a few years, but it had been overtaken by thick undergrowth, so I moved to a more open spot. |
When planting a coontie, the fat underground stem should be just below the surface. |
So, if you don't have coonties in your yard or in your community, I strongly recommend them unless you have dogs that might consume the seeds. Of course, you could chop off the female cones, so no seeds would be produced.
Green Gardening Matters,
Ginny Stibolt
References:
- NPR story with Roger Hammer on the Atala Butterfly:
https://www.npr.org/2024/03/01/1235356145/the-comeback-story-of-a-little-butterfly-thought-to-be-gone-from-florida
- Coontie Courage by Green Deane: https://www.eattheweeds.com/zamia-floridana-making-toxins-edible-2/
- Atala: Know your native pollinators: https://www.flawildflowers.org/know-your-native-pollinators-atala/
- Treasure Coast Natives-Coontie: https://treasurecoastnatives.com/2022/11/26/coontie/
- Against all Odds Sarasota Magazine: https://www.sarasotamagazine.com/news-and-profiles/2025/11/atala-butterfly
- Forget flowers: These ancient plants attract pollinators by getting hot: https://www.kuow.org/stories/forget-flowers-these-ancient-plants-attract-pollinators-by-getting-hot
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