''Zamia roezlii'' is a species of

cycad Cycads are seed plants that typically have a stout and woody (ligneous) trunk with a crown of large, hard, stiff, evergreen and (usually) pinnate leaves. The species are dioecious, that is, individual plants of a species are either male o ...

, a palm-like pachycaulous

plant Plants are predominantly photosynthetic eukaryotes of the kingdom Plantae. Historically, the plant kingdom encompassed all living things that were not animals, and included algae and fungi; however, all current definitions of Plantae exclu ...

in the family

Zamiaceae The Zamiaceae are a family of cycads that are superficially palm or fern-like. They are divided into two subfamilies with eight genera and about 150 species in the tropical and subtropical regions of Africa, Australia and North and South America ...

. It is found in Colombia (Choco, Nariño, Valle del Cauca, and Amazonas departments) and the Pacific coast of

Ecuador Ecuador ( ; ; Quechua: ''Ikwayur''; Shuar: ''Ecuador'' or ''Ekuatur''), officially the Republic of Ecuador ( es, República del Ecuador, which literally translates as "Republic of the Equator"; Quechua: ''Ikwadur Ripuwlika''; Shuar: ' ...

. It is named for the Czech botanist

Benedikt Roezl Benedikt Roezl (13 August 1824, Horomeritz (Bohemia, Austrian Empire) – 14 October 1885, Prague) was a traveller, gardener and botanist (sometimes Benedict or Benito Roezl as called by the Indians). Probably the most famous collector of orchid ...

. A single sperm cell from ''Zamia roezlii'' is about 0.4mm in length and is visible to the unaided eye, being the world's largest plant sperm cell. ''

Drosophila bifurca ''Drosophila bifurca'' is a species of fruit fly. Males of this species are known to have the longest sperm cells of any organism on Earth—5.8 cm long when uncoiled, over twenty times the entire body length of the male. The cells are mo ...

'', a species of fruit fly, has sperm that are 5.8cm long, albeit mostly coiled tail. The tree is up to 22 feet (seven meters) in height with fronds up to ten feet (three meters) long bearing leaflets up to twenty inches (fifty centimeters) long and six inches (fifteen cm) wide.>

References

* https://web.archive.org/web/20101117213708/http://waynesword.palomar.edu:80/ww0601.htm#sperm roezlii Flora of Ecuador Flora of Colombia Near threatened plants Taxonomy articles created by Polbot {{Cycad-stub