Etymology: Honoring Professor Aldo Moretti of the Orto Botanico, University of Naples, and a leading researcher on the cycads of the New World. Historical notes: Named in 1998 by Mexican biologists Mario Vazquez-Torres and Andrew Vovides. Distinguishing features: Circinate leaf vernation, few leaves with wide leaflets, short branched trunks. Distribution and habitat: A narrow endemic in Veracruz state, Mexico, growing lithophytically on sheltered cliffs in mixed evergreen and deciduous cloud forests in the Sierra Madre. Conservation status: Endangered. Not listed by the 1997 IUCN Red List of Threatened Plants. Description:
Plants acaulescent; stem 30 cm long, stem 8 cm diam. Leaves 4-7 in crown. New growth emerging mid-green. Leaves light or bright green, dull, 100-140 cm long, flat (not keeled) in section, with 24-50 leaflets; vernation circinnate; rachis not or slightly spirally twisted; petiole 45-60 cm long, unarmed. Leaflets not clustered, linear, asymmetric, broadest above middle, falcate, weakly discolorous, thin or membranous; margins flat, or incurved; median leaflets 25-35 cm long, 27-48 mm wide. Cataphylls 26 mm long. Pollen cones yellow-green, fusiform-cylindrical, 10-15 cm long, 2.5-4 cm diam.; peduncle 5-7 cm long; microsporophyll lamina 10-12 mm long, 8-9 mm wide. Seed cones yellow-green, narrowly ovoid-cilindrical, 12-16 cm long, 4.5-5 cm diam.; peduncle 5-7 cm long. Seeds ovoid, 15-18 mm long, 12 mm wide; sarcotesta white, aging to
brown.
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