You almost have to be talking about a ponytail palm (Bottle Palm, Elephant foot) beaucarnea recurvata. To propagate a old plant (which you have) cut off it's head, which may force out two or three buds a few inches below the cut. These buds can then be cut away and rooted. best undertaken in the summer and not a real high survival rate. I don't know if anything can be done with the 'head'. But if it was me I would try to root the head as well, stranger things have happened and if you HAVE to do this may as well experiment while you are at it:)

I have this plant to and think it's one of the better ones out there. I have two one on the south side of the house and one in a bed on the north side. They both went through a very cold winter here in north Louisiana with no cold damage. But I did damage mine with over fertilizing. The hose end type is what I was using. I believe it was miracle grow. When I use it in the future I will wash the fertilizer out of the center. I don't believe your winter is anything near what I have here. Bob

Yep, HP has good phone support. I called one nite about 11pm my time Eastern and they spent time with me trouble shooting a brand new printer that didnt work from the get go. Told me I'd have to send it back to them though for repair. I said I just bought it two or three hours ago... I'll take it back in the morning and try another one. Girl said I couldnt do that because I had already registered it. But I did return it first thing in the morning.

I have 10+ year old yuccas and discovered by accident that leaving the dead flower stems on until next year's flower stalks get too high for the deer seems to deflect the deer. The old stalks apparently get in their way and except for a few around the edges, the deer leave the rest alone. Doing this also leads to copious numbers of volunteers across the yard distributed by New Mexico's spring winds. Starting with three, I now have 15 blooming and about 20 new shoots this year. They don't always come up where you want them but are easy to transplant when young. I leave as many as I can where are. Seems they know better where they want to grow than I do.