Becoming Female

Encephalartos woodii is an extremely rare cycad on the verge of extinction. Only one male specimen was found in the wild. Offsets and stems from this plant have since been propagated but they all are clones and critically, all are male. Cycads, being dioecious, require a female counterpart for sexual reproduction. In the case of Encephalartos woodii, without a female, it remains the last of its kind, suspended in a limbo of conservation through vegetative propagation. 

Becoming Female explores possibilities of creating a female by inducing sex change.

Work-in-Progress

Creating a Female

Becoming Female builds on from AI in the Sky (2024) and Living Dead: On the Trail of the Female (2022) that equipped drones with advanced sensors to create maps that allow us to see into the forest beyond the naked eye and utilises artificial intelligence - both computer vision and generative AI - to assist in the search for the female partner for one of the rarest plants in the world, the cycad - Encephalartos woodii (E. woodii). Machine learning analysis together with synthetic data improved how the maps were searched.

The search is ongoing. But what happens if the female is not there?

Becoming Female shifts the investigation from searching for a missing female to exploring whether one might be created. The project investigates alternative conservation strategies for inducing sex change in the existing male plants through chemical and environmental interventions.
Drone Mission Search for Encephalartos woodii , oNgoye Forest, KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa © C-LAB.
Drone Mission Search for Encephalartos woodii , oNgoye Forest, KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa © C-LAB.

E. WOODII &

The Missing Female

More than a century ago, Encephalartos woodii (E. woodii) was identified in the oNgoye Forest of South Africa. Despite multiple expeditions, no other specimens have been found.

Existing specimens of E. woodii, whether in botanical gardens or private collections around the world, are propagated from offsets of a single pollen-producing individual that was removed from the forest in the early twentieth century. The resulting clonal lineage has prevented the species from disappearing entirely.


From a biological standpoint, cycads are unequivocally dioecious: their reproduction depends on a structural separation of pollen- and seed-bearing organs across distinct individuals.

Lacking a female counterpart, E. woodii is confined to clonal repetition, no possibility exists for genetic renewal, only endless offsets of the same pollen-producing lineage.
E. Woodii at Temperate House, Royal Botanic Garden, Kew, September 2025. Photo: Laura Cinti. This E. Woodii specimen in
E. Woodii at Temperate House, Royal Botanic Garden, Kew, September 2025. Photo: Laura Cinti. This E. Woodii specimen in Kew Gardens is an offset of the only plant of this specimen ever found in the wild. It was sent to Kew in 1899.

SEX REVERSAL &

Experimental Approaches

What happens when the future of a species depends on becoming something it has never been?

Could a species be 'saved' by changing its sex?

Sex change represents a more radical, speculative path. The use of chemical agents and tissue culture techniques could potentially induce the development of female reproductive organs in a genetically male plant.

Initial laboratory work is underway and early-stage micropropagation protocols are being tested, marking the beginning of an experimental phase that explores the biological limits of intervention.
Becoming Female, Five cycad plantlets suspended in test tubes with nutrient liquid, shown mid-propagation in a lab envir
Becoming Female, Five cycad plantlets suspended in test tubes with nutrient liquid, shown mid-propagation in a lab environment. Early growth stage with roots and green leaf clusters © C-LAB.

HYBRIDISATION

Backcrossing with close relatives

Conservation strategies to “complete” E. woodii currently revolve around two main avenues: hybridisation and sex change.

Hybridisation involves crossing E. woodii pollen with ovulate cones of closely related species, such as
Encephalartos natalensis. If these offspring are repeatedly backcrossed with E. woodii across multiple generations, a lineage may eventually emerge resembling “pure” E. woodii. Yet each generation inherits genetic material from a maternal lineage, complicating questions of authenticity and species boundaries.
Encephalartos woodii × natalensis, Orto Botanico di Palermo, Italy, 2026. Photo: Laura Cinti © C-LAB
Encephalartos woodii × natalensis, Orto Botanico di Palermo, Italy, 2026. Photo: Laura Cinti © C-LAB

INDUCING SEX CHANGE

In tissue-cultured plantlets

This phase of the project is currently underway. Working with a research laboratory, early-stage micropropagation protocols are being tested as a first step towards investigating whether female reproductive development could be induced in E. woodii. Chemical and tissue-culture approaches to sex change in E. woodii have been proposed, although these were not demonstrated. More recent research into cycad sex determination has provided new tools for investigating sex expression.

The process is slow and uncertain. E. woodii is difficult to propagate through tissue culture, and even successful sexual reproduction would involve lengthy germination and development. No sexually produced E. woodii offspring have been documented.

Becoming Female explores what it might mean to intervene in the reproductive biology of a species that has survived for more than a century without a female  and whether producing one would truly “save” the species.
Our attempts to introduce E. ferox in vitro, Institute of Biology, Bucharest, Romanian Academy, 2026. Photo: Florenta-El
Our attempts to introduce E. ferox in vitro, Institute of Biology, Bucharest, Romanian Academy, 2026. Photo: Florenta-Elena Helepciuc © C-LAB

IMAGINING THE FEMALE

Speculative Cone

To date, no female cones of E. woodii have been observed. Drawing on related species and botanical inference, these speculative renderings propose what a female reproductive structure might look like in this “extinct in the wild” cycad.

Creating a female raises a different question: can a species be conserved by changing it? Can a species be conserved by changing it?
Becoming Female - Cone Studies, speculative renderings of a female E. woodii cones shown at the exhibition, H for
Becoming Female - Cone Studies, speculative renderings of a female E. woodii cones shown at the exhibition, H for Hybrid at Wizard Lab, Milan, Italy, 2025 © C-LAB