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Old 23-01-2006, 01:54 PM posted to uk.rec.gardening
p.k.
 
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Default cutting back a Cordyline?

Des Higgins wrote:
I am not sure if pruning is the right word but I have a BIG Cordyline
(C. australis?? cabbage palm). I do not want to kill it but it is
humungous with one big "trunk". If I cut it in half (half way up the
trunk; not left half vs right half ho ho ho), will it regrow? Being
monocots, they grow funny so I would not be surprised if teh answer
was that this would kill it. Nonetheless, in big old Irish estates
(Fota and Mountstewart) you do see ancient ones with lot and lots of
smaller trunks, rather then one big one so that suggests they can be
persuaded to spread out. Maybe that has to be done from an earlier
age.
Des


it will grow away quite happily from below the cut.

Friends in Cornwall have an avenue of them lining their drive, whenever they
get frosted they just cut down progressively to solid trunk and wait for the
regrowth.

pk