The Cycadaceae are woody, unbranched or sparsely branched, palmlike, dioecious, seed-bearing trees or shrubs with thick, pithy stems. The leaves are frondlike, pinnately compound, usually stiff, and often with sharply pointed leaflets that exhibit circinnate vernation.
Leaves are alternate, and spirally arranged in a cluster at the summit of the stem.
The ovules and seeds are born naked on the petioles of reduced leaves that are loosely clustered or more highly modified and compacted into female or ovulate cones. One of four haploid megaspores in each ovule potentially produces a highly multicellular but dependent female gametophyte bearing 1 or more archegonia, each containing an egg cell. Male plants produce male or microsporangiate cones that bear many scales, each with an abundance of microsporangia scattered over the lower surface. Motile sperm cells are eventually produced by the pollen grains or microgametophytes that develop from the microspores. Once pollen grains are dispersed to the vicinity of the micropyle of the ovule, a pollen tube delivers the sperm in close proximity to the archegonium where the motile sperm may swim through a droplet of nectarlike fluid to reach the egg.