The Ancient Cycad of the Palm House

In 1842, the Danish botanist Frederik Liebmann sailed to Mexico and came home with, among other specimens, a small cycad that looked more like a stunted pineapple than anything resembling a tree. It has spent nearly two centuries since then growing at its own unhurried pace in Copenhagen's Botanical Garden, first at the garden's earlier city-centre site and then, from 1874, in the Palm House built specifically to keep tropical and subtropical plants alive through Danish winters. Cycads are not actually related to palms or ferns despite resembling both; they are among the oldest living groups of seed plants on Earth, largely unchanged since long before flowering plants existed, which makes a 184-year-old specimen barely middle-aged by the standards of its own family. Liebmann died in 1856 at just 43, only 14 years after bringing the plant home, but his cycad has outlived him by more than a century and a half and remains, by the garden's own account, its oldest living specimen and one of its genuine star attractions, a slow-growing plant that has simply outlasted everyone who ever went looking for one.