Unlike flowering plants, or angiosperms, cycads are gymnosperms – the group that also includes modern conifers such as pines and firs. Cycad plants are male or female. They look similar to palms or ferns, but are not related to either. Instead, cycads are a group of plants that the fossil record suggests have been around since the Permian Period roughly 290 million to 250 million years ago.

University of Utah scientists discovered a strange method of reproduction in primitive plants named cycads: The plants heat up and emit a toxic odor to drive pollen-covered insects out of male cycad cones, and then use a milder odor to draw the bugs into female cones so the plants are pollinated.