I have not seen a picture, but I can tell you the perfect way to do it. Wash off the entire stem area. Make a clean, smooth cut with a hacksaw. Any irregular cuts or wounds are a place for fungus to get into. At once, when you make the clean cut, you cover the wound area with a Daconil solution. Once the liquid drys, which if put in the sun, will take about 10 minutes. It will look dull looking instead of shiny when it is dry. If you have a liquid rooting hormone, such as Dip and Grow, you can mix that with your Daconil. Once dry, paint the wound area with the black tree paint, or what might be called tree sealer, or wound sealer. Once the sealer is dry, which would be another 15 minutes, place it in a container filled with clean, inorganic medium. I use pure sugar sand. You don't want to water the piece. Put it in a shady area and only let it get moist once every 3 weeks or so, just to make sure the stem piece doesn't desicate. The wounds harden up in about 3 Weeks, but it might be an entire year before it can be considered to be a viable plant.

Okay, that sounds reasonable.

A photo might have shown the challenge in using a hacksaw, but I can figure something out. I need to acquire the gear first, and since I have a number of other cycads and sagos and have successfully grown many 'volunteers" I am aware of the time element. One year is more or less expected. My sagos require far less prep.

Thank you, I will shop for the Daconil and sealer and a couple nice pots. The thing is, while sagos and other cycads resemble palms, this plant is about fifteen years old and looks more like a bush, a shrub, than a tree. LB

The smooth cut is the most important thing. Send me picture privately if you want. I'm still speculating but if they're ate leaves in the way, you are cutting them all off before you do any of this. If it is a huge cluster without a lot of separation between a species, how about a sawsall with a 12 inch blade? Will that cut through what you have? If it does, once you slice it up, just recut any wounds or smooth out the cuts with as hacksaw and call it good.