Fig. 15.2-8a and b. Transverse section of wood of Zamia (called “cardboard palm” – but Zamia is a gymnosperm, not a monocot). Cycads like this Zamia in the upper micrograph have manoxylic wood – wood high a high abundance of parenchyma. The rows of tracheids are narrow, and the parenchyma cells are filled with starch grains (small arrows).

This is very different from the pycnoxylic wood of conifers, shown in the lower micrograph of pine, in which parenchyma is rare and almost all the wood consists of axial tracheids.