ABSTRACT
This chapter provides information on uses, folk medicine, chemistry, germplasm, distribution, ecology, cultivation, harvesting, yields, energy, and biotic factors of Cica, Crozier Cycas. Cycad nuts are rather large, many of them an inch across. They are fat and rounded, full of starch, and mostly covered by a brilliant orange or reddish outer coat. The poisonous substance in Cycads is soluble in water. It can be leached from the nuts or from the starchy center of the trunk by water, rendering them fit to eat. Reported to be carminative, narcotic, and poison, C. circinalis is a folk remedy for nausea, sores, swellings, and thirst. Terminal buds are crushed in rice-water for adenitis, furuncles, and ulcerous sores. Many of Captain's Cook's voyagers vomited following the ingestion of cycad nuts. Symptoms of poisoning include headache, violent retching, vertigo, swelling of the stomach and legs, depression, stupor, euphoria, diarrhea, abdominal cramps, tenesmus, muscle paralysis, and rheumatism.
