Encephalartos nubimontanus flushing - 13 years old

[Tracy]

Here is my 13 year old Encephalartos nubimontanus flushing again!  I got it as a 1 leaf seedling in a 3"x9" band in 2011. 

Puzzled?  Yes this is the correct photo.

[Tracy]

Here it is again in 2011 still in the 3"x9" band size pot.  It is one of the two pots inside the terracotta clay pot in the first photo.

The second photo was planted after it had been moved up once into a citrus pot in 2017.  Unfortunately it would have grown much faster had I put it in the ground rather than keeping it in a pot so long.  I ended up deciding that wasn't the place for it in the garden and moved it to a new spot in the garden. 

My dog ended up trampling it and I saw neither hide nor hair of it for years, as the leaves broke off from the still subterranean caudex.  I assumed it was a goner.  I was out weeding at one point this last spring and thought I saw a weed coming up from underneath my Acacia cognata "Cousin ITT", so I bent down and under the plant and yanked up what I thought was a weed.  I was sorely disappointed to see that I had two long scraggly Encephalartos nubimontanus leaves flushing and reaching for sunlight.  Ooops.  I didn't expect to find that there after all these years.  I planted the Cousin ITT not thinking the little nubi would ever come back.

So the other day, I noticed the single leaf coming up in my first photo of the string.  What a surprise.  I have another nubimontanus that was a couple of years older that I planted in this garden.  I've harvested pups off it but it still hasn't coned yet.  The 15 year old Encephalartos nubimontanus is in the last photo.  So perhaps the lesson is that where there is a will to survive, a plant will survive.