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 is payable to Cycad Central on every completed sale — 5% on sales up to R5,000 or 2.5% on sales over R5,000 — paid by the seller out of the sale price. Expert verification is free for now, so no verification fee is charged. The fee is deducted from the sale price: the buyer pays that fee directly to Cycad Central and the rest of the sale price directly to the seller. Expert payments for verification work are not enabled at this stage.

A sale closes when the seller confirms that the sale amount reached their bank account; the plant is then marked sold and the buyer must collect it within 14 days. The Cycad Central fee remains payable by the buyer and is followed up by Cycad Central. Once both payments are confirmed, Cycad Central issues two invoices to the buyer: its own invoice for the fee, and an invoice for the plant in the seller's name, raised on the seller's behalf from the invoice details the seller supplied.

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 and Surname. 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.

By listing a plant, requesting expert verification or accepting a verification outcome, you grant Cycad Central a non-exclusive, royalty-free licence to use the photographs, measurements, species details and expert findings recorded for that plant to train, test and improve our identification tools, and to promote Cycad Central and its services. You keep ownership of your photographs.

Training and marketing use never includes your contact details, address, banking details or permit documents. Where a plant is shown in marketing material, the owner is identified by initials and Surname only, or not at all. If you do not want a specific photograph used in marketing, tell us at support@cycadcentral.com and we will remove it from that use.

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 (seedling, sucker or unknown — wild-collected plants may not be traded), condition, and measurements taken to the platform standard:  caudex height and 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. Wild-collected plants may not be listed or traded 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 15 minutes, 24 hours or 48 hours from launch (or from its scheduled start time), 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.

A seller who repeatedly lists plants and then withdraws or cancels the sale once expert verification is complete will be flagged for further investigation. If the outcome shows the seller is using the platform to obtain verifications rather than genuinely to sell plants, listing privileges may be suspended and membership may be revoked, with verification fees remaining payable.

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.

Before a plant can be published, the seller must accept the seller legal declaration: that they are legally entitled to sell the plant, that the plant has a lawful origin, that all permits, registrations, documentation and authorisations required for its sale and transportation are in place, that Cycad Central is an intermediary marketplace which does not issue or approve conservation permits, and that the information and documentation supplied is accurate and complete.

Each acceptance is recorded permanently against the plant with the member, the date and time, the request details and the version of the wording accepted. Where this is complete, the platform states only “seller compliance declaration complete” — never that Cycad Central has approved a sale.

Before an order can be paid or completed, the buyer must accept the buyer legal declaration: that they are legally entitled to acquire and possess the plant, that they accept responsibility for obtaining and maintaining any permits or authorisations required for acquisition, possession and transportation, that Cycad Central facilitates but does not issue or approve conservation permits, and that they accept responsibility for complying with all applicable South African legislation. Acceptances are recorded in the same way.

The buyer and seller are responsible for ensuring that all required transport or movement permits and documentation are obtained before a plant is moved. Additional provincial or transport requirements may apply; the buyer and seller are responsible for confirming the applicable requirements with the relevant conservation authority.

A declaration that is knowingly false is a serious breach of these terms. It may result in the listing being removed, the sale being cancelled, funds being held, the account being suspended or closed, and the records concerned being provided to the relevant authorities on lawful request. Declarations cannot be edited or deleted by members once recorded.

Cycad Central is an independent marketplace and intermediary. It is not a conservation authority, a permit-issuing authority, a regulator or a legal adviser, and it does not replace the relevant national or provincial conservation authorities. Cycad Central may refuse, suspend or remove any listing where there is a compliance concern, incomplete information, suspected illegal origin or other reasonable concern about a transaction. Declaration, listing, order and audit records are retained for as long as needed for transaction records, fraud prevention, dispute handling, legal compliance and audit purposes, and Cycad Central cooperates with lawful requests from conservation authorities.

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.

Cycad Central does not hold the sale amount. The buyer transfers the seller's Cycad Central fee (5% on sales up to R5,000 or 2.5% on sales over R5,000 — paid by the seller out of the sale price) directly to Cycad Central, and the rest of the sale price directly into the seller's bank account. Cycad Central records both payments, the references and each party's confirmation.

The plant may be handed over once the seller has confirmed receipt of the sale amount. The buyer must collect within 14 days of the sale closing. Where a dispute is raised, the order is frozen and an administrator reviews it.

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 an intermediary and record-keeper. 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.