It's the green shoots of recovery - for cordyline palms anyway

In the very earliest days after the Northerner changed into a blog from an email, I launched a tragic post about the slaughter of the north's Cordyline australis plants following last winter's vicious temperatures. Ever since, I have clocked them, from the West Cumbrian coast to the sad little group outside the Omar Khayam restaurant in Bradford which added an extra touch of the East to the luscious smell of curry from the OK and the nearby Karachi in Neal Street. It was sad, and I have since lived with the naked trunks of our own fine specimen in Leeds, convinced that the end was absolute. After all, I rang up the Royal Horticultural Society 's helpful people at Harlow Carr in Harrogate and they said with an air of finality: "The best thing is to dig it up." They were all dead,all over the north, and though one or two readers sent posts trampling on their graves, they did so in the gentle manner which, I'm grateful to say, seems characteristic of Northerner threads. I can see why some people find cordylines alien to the landscape of Captain Cook and the Brontes (although come to think of it, they would probably have made Captain Cook feel at home.) Anyway... What should happen but when I was mowing today, I glanced at the tree's sad stumps and Look! I beheld new growth coming up from the grass. At first, I thought it was an invasive clump of montbretia , that bramble of the flowering perennial world which we have in spades. But no, it is the real thing. Are these the green shoots of recovery? Do they portend something? I will keep you informed. One of these days I will also install the thatch panels I've made from the old tree's dagger leaves in our tree house, so you may get an illustrated account of that too. News of other reviving cordylines twixt Trent and Tweed? Please let us know.