The wake of the cycad

This cycad grows in the dark SW corner of my garden. It had been asleep for roughly two years. You can see this from the empty layer between the new and old growth. The story is that some new leaves were emerging about two years ago, but they didn't make it. I was of little interest to find out the cause. 

This year, I saw the low-hanging bottlebrush tree above it was almost tipping itself over, so I gave it a pretty hard prune. Then the magic was done to this cycad - a beautiful new group of leaves quickly opened up and stretched upwards. Though in the recent heatwave, the tips of new leaves look a bit burnt.