I read this thread and kind of marvel. The effort people expend to grow plants in a hostile climate. I bought a $5 sago 40 years ago when I bought my house, it is over six feet tall The male flower is (like) two feet long, every year for at least the past 15 years. A flush consists of at least two dozen fronds , (or leaves) if you prefer. I have successfully raised and given away probably three dozen pups broken off from the parent plant. Most survive, maybe 80% but some don't. It gets cold here, we are at 1700 ft. elevation and freezes some years but I have never had a sago show damage from frost. Plumaria, that's another crap shoot, but the sagos do very well here. I have managed to keep twenty pups that are well established and in the ground. In other words, this climate is very agreeable for sagos and they are common all around here, seems like everybody has at least one? I'm not rubbing your nose in it here; I salute the effort to grow (what is almost a tropical), in a climate which is not suitable. Good luck. LB PS no coconut palms here, lots of King Palms but by far the most popular and numerous palm in this area is the Queen.

Sagos are a zone 8-8B plant. Some get away with them in 7B in protected locations, but they defoliate. I've seen damage in zone 8 too. In 7A without major protection (heat), they will likely die. Expect dieback of fronds below 18 degrees. Below 10-14 degrees, the plant will likely die, depending on the duration.

I have it on the ground here in NYC (Brooklyn backyard). It dies to the ground by December, and it comes back with larger leafes. I treat as a perennial in this area. It is a great accent to the garden. Make sure you apply fungicide on the crown and mulch it after it looses its leafes. It starts to produce new leaves in the begginning of June. This next winter I will try protecting with landscape fabric all leaves and see if the technique works as well as it has been working for some palms, cycads and other tropicals and sub-tropicals over here. Please, also read this books "Palms won't grow her and other myths" by David Francko. It has given me so much knowledge that I do recommend to anyone willing to push the bounderies. Good luck!

I have grown as many as 200 cycad species over the last 29 years. It would take me hours to write everything I can tell you on this subject. My cycad cultivation articles have been printed in 17 different journals all over the world, and for almost a decade of years, I have been the president of The Cycad Society which is international in scope. All parts of the cycad is poisonous, even the pollen, and the jelly that was mentioned that the cones can excrete sometimes. People eat cycad material all over the world. Anybody know why Cycas revoluta is called the " sago palm"? Sago, or sagu, is a starchy porridge type food that the old native people from Japan made from the stem material. Seeds of Dioons are used to make tamales, and tortillas in Mexico and Honduras. The Aborigines in Australia have eaten the seeds of Lepidozamias for 10s of centuries. There are pictures of Lepidozamia hopei plants with 40 foot stems, that are literally 2000 years old that have gouges on both sides of the stems going all the way to the top, which is used as a ladder to climb to the top to collect seeds. Coontie, the Zamia native here to Florida, is a Seminole name for the plant because they have made a starchy food out of the stems for 100s of years. They learned how to use them for food by the Caloosas, who were here first. Some people leach the toxins out, some people don't. As you have read, small animals die from eating cycad material. A 15 pound dog will usually die of liver and kidney failure within 48 hours, but they don't have to. A dog like a lab that weighs 90 pounds might get yellow eyes, white patches in the fur, and be really sick for a week, but with proper care, can come out of it and be perfectly fine and live a long time with no extra needed medicine or treatment. Since I talk about cycads to everyone I meet, my vet has heard all about them and she went out and researched a lot and has already saved several dogs from death. I don't know a lot about this subject, but she found some medicine that helps the animal have liver functions while the liver tries to get through the damage. Apparently it is amazing, but hardly any vets know about this and just assume there is no cure. A child is most likely not going to eat a sago seed. Those things are good sized and are rock hard. Zamia seeds would be a different story. You would Hebe to eat a lot of leaf material to be dangerous, and most children or animals won't want to eat that much material. I have designed and installed over 1400 landscapes, mostly in the past when I was younger. Any time there was a concern, I would put known male plants in their landscapes, so, no seeds. Even if you have a female plant, just cut the cone off once it is full size. On coonties, the cones come out in summer, grow until full size, and are usually receptive to pollination around Christmas. The cones will grow the seeds until the cone falls apart around the next November or December. So you have a long time period where all you do is cut the cone off. A revoluta female will become receptive in June and will fall apart around Christmas. Since the female Cycad " cone" is not a tight cone, but actually a cluster if sporaphylls, it is harder to remove, but all you do is remove each sporaphyll, one at a time, starting from the outside in. It may take a little extra effort, but it isn't a big deal. This will get us started anyway.