Bare-root planted cycad (sago palm) nine years after

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The sago palm (cycas revoluta) that a good friend of mine sent me nine years ago is doing great, and I thought you might like a follow-up. The photo at the top of this post is from a few minutes ago, and the rest of the pics are from 2014, when my friend sold his house, and very carefully followed my directions so that I could transplant it here.

Here's what it looked like when it first arrived here, as per my instructions with all of the leaves cut off, with the roots intact, but no dirt. The first thing that I did was to soak it in plain water overnight.


Then I sat down for quite a while and trimmed it all down as much as I could, still soaking. Here it is:


The next step was to dig a nice big hole, filled with potting soil - the good kind. I'm a big believer in preparation - you know, "dig a $100 hole for a $50 tree"! This plant didn't cost me any money, but it cost my friend in a huge amount of work, and I did a fair amount of work, too!


I'm not really sure how old the plant was when it came to live with me, but since cycads are very slow growers, and even large ones really don't have a proper trunk, just a "pineapple", I'm guessing it was probably about 25 years old, or around there.


I planted it in September, and some new leaves started growing the following June, which was an exciting time, as I do a lot of stuff like this, and most of it fails.

And so here it is today, which is the photo that I just sent to my friend who is relaxing in retirement somewhere in the great northwest. I really appreciate what he did, and I hope that he knows that. The lesson here is to keep trying, you never know! Now go plant a bare-root cycad!



Thank you for the encouragement! If you want to see daily pics of my adventures on my recumbent trike in suburban Phoenix (just for fun, of course!) you can follow me on buymeacoffee.com/bradhall, and you can buy me a coffee if you'd like to!

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