SCRAMBLING along a rough mountain trail, I am surrounded by strange trees clinging precariously to the slopes. With their etched and contorted trunks topped by jagged fronds and gaudy orange cones, these are the most bizarre trees I have ever seen.
This is the sacred cycad forest of the Rain Queen, the hereditary ruler of the Balobedu people of Limpopo province in South Africa. Cycads grow here more abundantly than anywhere else on Earth, and the queen is said to use her magical powers to protect them. These strange plants need all the help they can get right now, magical or otherwise, to ward off the unscrupulous collectors that are plundering them. But long before the human threat arrived, the cycads faced a challenge of an altogether greater magnitude.
Step back 150 million years and you would have seen an incredible profusion of cycads, along with their relatives the conifers, ...
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