Terms, sale rules, permits & indemnity

Cycad Central is a specialist marketplace and provenance registry. We introduce buyers and sellers, host listings and auctions, coordinate independent expert verification and record the Cycad Certificate chain. We are not the seller, the buyer, the auctioneer of record, an appraiser, a conservation authority, or an agent of any party.

You must be 18 or older and provide accurate contact details. One account per person or business. You are responsible for everything done under your account. Accounts used for misrepresentation, bid manipulation or illegal plant material are closed without refund.

A platform fee of 5% of the sale price is payable on every completed sale, plus an expert verification fee of 2% where the plant was verified. Fees are shown on the order before it is confirmed and are deducted from the seller's net proceeds.

A verified badge means that independent experts, at the level required for the declared value, examined the submitted photographs, measurements and provenance information and reached the recorded conclusion. It is a considered opinion on identification and condition at a point in time — not a guarantee of species, health, legality, age, or value.

Photographs and descriptions must be of the actual plant offered, taken recently. No stock imagery, no reused photographs from a previous sale, no undisclosed material damage or recent transplanting. We may edit, hide or remove any listing, cancel any auction, and suspend any account to protect members or comply with the law.

Contact details are shared only between the parties to a live negotiation, offer or order, and with administrators for dispute resolution. Ownership names in a public Cycad Certificate are shown as initials. When a sale is archived, the seller may export the full record for their own records; the platform keeps the order, certificate and audit entries required for provenance and disputes.

South African law applies. Disputes are first referred to Cycad Central's internal dispute process, then to the courts of the Republic of South Africa. Nothing in these terms limits rights that cannot lawfully be limited, including under the Consumer Protection Act where it applies.

Every listing must state species, sex where known, origin (wild, cultivated or unknown), condition, and measurements taken to the platform standard: overall height, caudex height, caudex diameter and plant diameter, all in millimetres. Known defects — rot history, insect damage, sunburn, root loss, recent removal from the ground — must be disclosed in the description.

You may only list a plant you own outright, that is not subject to a dispute, claim, lien, or pending forfeiture, and that was lawfully acquired. Plants of unlawful wild origin may not be listed under any circumstances.

An accepted offer is a binding sale at the accepted amount. Offers lapse if the listing is sold, withdrawn or sent to auction. Sellers may not solicit payment outside the platform to avoid fees; doing so forfeits all dispute support.

An auction runs for a fixed 24 or 48 hours from launch, with a live countdown. Every bid must meet the current bid plus the seller's minimum increment. Bids are binding and cannot be retracted. Sellers, and anyone acting for a seller, may not bid on their own plant.

A seller may set a reserve and choose whether it is public or hidden. Where the reserve is hidden, bidders are told only whether it has been met. If the auction closes at or above the reserve — or with no reserve set — the highest bid wins and an order is created automatically. If it closes below the reserve the plant does not sell and returns to normal sale.

Administrators may cancel an auction, flag it as disputed, or override an outcome where there is evidence of bid manipulation, misdescription, a technical fault, or a legal obstacle. Every such action is recorded in the audit log with the actor and timestamp.

Payment terms are agreed between buyer and seller through platform messaging and recorded against the order. Unless agreed otherwise, the buyer pays in full before collection, collection is at the seller's address within 14 days of the order, and risk in the plant passes to the buyer on collection or on handover to a transporter nominated by the buyer.

A buyer who fails to pay, or a seller who fails to release a paid plant, within 14 days of the order may have the order cancelled against them, ratings affected, and repeat conduct may end membership. Deliberate misdescription entitles the buyer to cancel and to a full refund of amounts paid to the seller.

Cycads are living plants. Once collected, survival depends on transport, planting and aftercare outside anyone's control but the buyer's. No warranty of survival, rooting, flushing or future growth is given by the seller, the experts or Cycad Central.

Encephalartos and other indigenous cycads are protected under South African national and provincial legislation, including the National Environmental Management: Biodiversity Act and provincial ordinances, and are listed under CITES. Possessing, buying, selling, transporting or exporting them generally requires valid permits.

The seller must hold every permit required to possess and to sell the plant, must be able to produce those permits on request by the buyer or by an authority, and must attach or reference the relevant documentation in the listing's provenance section. Plant tags and microchips must not be removed, altered, or swapped.

The buyer must hold the permits required to acquire and to possess the plant in their own province before collection, and must satisfy themselves that the seller's permits are valid and correspond to the plant being sold. Transport permits, where required, must be in place before the plant is moved.

Any export requires CITES documentation obtained by the exporter before shipment. Cycad Central does not arrange, verify or underwrite export permits and does not facilitate cross-border sales.

We do not issue, verify, hold, or vouch for permits, and a Cycad Certificate is not a permit. The certificate records identification, verification and ownership history only. Nothing on this platform authorises possession, movement, sale or export of a protected plant.

Listings that appear to involve illegally removed or undocumented wild material are removed and may be reported. We cooperate fully with lawful requests from conservation authorities and the police, including producing listing records, order records and audit logs.

The seller indemnifies and holds harmless Cycad Central, its directors, employees and appointed experts against all claims, fines, penalties, confiscations, damages, legal costs and losses arising from: the seller's lack of permits or lawful title; unlawful wild collection; misdescription of species, sex, origin, age or condition; and any breach of these terms.

The buyer indemnifies and holds harmless Cycad Central and its appointed experts against all claims, fines, penalties and losses arising from the buyer's possession, transport, planting, resale or export of a plant acquired through the platform, including any failure to hold the required permits.

Experts act as independent contractors giving a professional opinion in good faith on the material submitted. They are not liable to any party for a difference of taxonomic opinion, for facts the seller withheld, or for the commercial outcome of a sale. Assessment disputes are handled through the platform's escalation and re-assessment process.

The platform is provided as-is. To the fullest extent permitted by law, Cycad Central is not liable for indirect, incidental or consequential loss, loss of profit or opportunity, plant death or decline, service interruption, or the acts and omissions of members. Where liability cannot be excluded, it is limited in total to the platform fees we actually received on the transaction concerned.

Where a buyer pays the sale amount to Cycad Central, those funds are held on the buyer's behalf and are not the property of Cycad Central. Funds are held until the buyer confirms collection or delivery of the plant, after which a 72-hour review window runs. If no dispute is raised in that window, Cycad Central releases the sale amount less the platform fee to the seller. If a dispute is raised, the funds stay held until an administrator resolves it, and may be released, partially settled or refunded to the buyer.

Expert assessment fees are earned when the assessment is delivered, regardless of the outcome or whether the plant sells, and are settled to experts on a monthly payout run.

Cycad Central acts as agent in holding and paying over these funds. It does not guarantee payment, delivery, authenticity or plant condition, and it does not act as an insurer of any transaction.

These indemnities survive the completion of a sale, the archiving of a listing and the closure of an account, and continue to apply to transactions concluded while these terms were in force.