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History: The township of Monteseel lies between Drummond and Inchanga on the road from Durban to Pietermaritzburg that passes the Valley of a Thousand Hills. The Monteseel cycads grow in a deep, rocky kloof in a part of the township which has been set aside as a public park.
There are three of these plants growing in the park, and all of them are female. The largest specimen is the type on which the description of the species Encephalartos natalensis (Dyer and Verdoorn) is based. The tallest stem stands about 6 m high with an average thickness of 38 cm, and several smaller stems growing up round it. Of the age of the plant, Drs. Dyer and Verdoorn say:
‘. . . to hazard a guess, the age of the largest branch of the matriarch is something upwards of 250 years and of the rootstock itself possibly more than 1 000 years’.’ A younger, unbranched plant growing nearby is about 90 cm high and estimated to be about 5 years old. A third, medium-sized specimen which has several trunks, the tallest of which is about 3 m tall, grows below a cliff about a kilometre away. Encephalartos natalensis is one of about twenty-six species of cycads which are strange, palm-like gymnospermous plants, survivals of an earlier primitive flora that formed a link between ferns and flowering plants. The three female specimens at Monteseel and one male specimen at the Railway Nurseries are the only examples of this species so far discovered though there is some evidence of the existence of other examples in the vicinity.
When the Monteseel township was laid out in 1951, the owner, Dr. A. Seele, generously agreed to reserve more than 12 ha including the kloof where the cycads grow, as a public park and readily consented to the protection of these rare and scientifically important plants.
The largest and oldest specimen has been proclaimed as a scientific monument."
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