LAHORE: A 176-year-old Queen Sago Palm, a member of a plant lineage older than the dinosaurs, has full leaves these days here at Lawrence Garden.
According to the Punjab Horticulture Authority (PHA), the tree predates the historic garden, which was developed in the 1860s as a botanical garden and leisure ground, modeled on London’s Kew Gardens.
“Queen Sago Palms are Cycads, an ancient group of seed-bearing plants whose fossil record dates to the Permian period, about 280 million to 300 million years ago. The world’s oldest potted plant, a Cycad, has been at Kew Gardens [in London] since 1775,” a PHA spokesperson told Dawn.
The cycads, he says, became particularly widespread during the Mesozoic Era, when dinosaurs dominated the Earth. Because of their abundance during the Jurassic and Cretaceous periods, the era is described as the “Age of Cycads”, alongside the “Age of Dinosaurs”.
Plant-eating dinosaurs, including long-necked sauropods, are believed to have fed on the foliage, cones, and nutrient-rich seeds of Cycads, including Sago Palm.
Cycads are also known for their exceptionally slow growth and longevity. According to horticulture experts, he says, the Sago Palms require around four to five hours of sunlight daily and relatively little water, once established.
Their slow-growing nature allows them to survive in a range of growing conditions, including relatively dry and poor soils. Their structure has changed little over millions of years, so they are commonly called “living fossils”. However, their numbers have declined considerably, and about 60pc of assessed species are now threatened with extinction in their natural habitats, according to the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) Red List of Threatened Species, the global inventory of extinction risk.
The spokesperson says the PHA also manages some of the world’s oldest prehistoric trees. “The fact that the Sago Palm in Lahore is not only prehistoric, but also belongs to a threatened variety, which makes it especially significant,” he says.
He further says that the Lawrence Garden was regarded as one of Asia’s largest botanical gardens, having around 150 varieties of trees, including 30 species of palms. And its collection includes trees and plants introduced by the British who brought these from parts of Europe, including Austria, Palestine, Syria and across the Indian Empire.
Published in Dawn, November 2nd, 2026
