I would wait until the plant starts to throwing out a fare amount of new growth. And yes, it can easily be trained
to resemble the tree by removing lower growing branches/side branches that are growing close to the ground.

{{gwi:12341}}
Ankrara's Hobby Corner

Thanks for the advice. I'll wait a while and start snipping. If the weather continues like it was here today, there should be new growth real soon.

On a different topic, does anyone know how to handle cold nipped yucca? I suppose its yucca. Long, pointy, spear-like leaves, which are all brown now and look awful. The whole plant has kind of collapsed. Should I whack it back to the ground?