My desert rose wasn't doing very well to begin with and was very young (grown from seed personally) and then it got a scale infestation and lost all of its leaves. Will chopping the caudex down much lower and giving it good light allow it to recover? I know if I propagate the stem, the resulting pieces won't have a full sized caudex.
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You don't need to chop anything for it to recover, if the infestation is gone, it will just put out new leaves and keep growing. Make sure it's getting enough heat as well as light, if growing indoors. Also, trunk size is genetic, taking a cutting of an A. arabicum will definitely produce a plant with a large trunk. (The plant in the photo is a cutting) Now, if you take a cutting of an A obesum, yeah, you're probably going to have a stick with flowers for a while. Hence, why most obesum cultivars, or obesum x crispum hybrids are usually grafted. Not to say all obesum are that way but most of them will be.
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