Wrongly named Sago Palm (there is actually a palm with that name), this belongs to Sago Palm Fern family and originally hails from Southern Japan. By now it's a widely distributed ornamental shrub all over the world, in mostly tropic (even though it doesn't exist in the rain-forest) and sub-tropic climates.
Its Latin name, Cycas revoluta refers actually to its leaves, as revoluta means curled back - as you can well see on the picture above. They are pretty cold resistance, in case they freeze and all the leaves turn yellow, just cut them back to the pineapple looking and stinging "trunk" and give them some month to recuperate and start anew.
A client of mine had some "older" sagos, where actually a male and female species started to develop - with a big cone on the male one and a leaf in the middle of the female one that carried the sporangia, the seeds being as big or even bigger than and as hard as a chestnut. Do not try to consume the leaves or the seeds, they are quite toxic and can lead to death.
Sources: Several Wikipedia sites, http://www.bambus-lexikon.de/
