Diseased oak

I'm No Expert

I live in the south of the UK and have an enormous English oak tree in my garden - possibly as much as 170 years old - which has plates of a dark fungus at the base of its trunk but looks otherwise well. I have been told is Inonotus Dryadeus and that the tree must be felled. Does this sound correct? If so, it will be a large-scale and costly operation. Does the timber have value, and should I expect this to be taken into account in the price set by the tree surgeon?

Eric Frei

We really need pics, and that fungus is pretty notorious.

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Brent Ferris

The timber may have value -- but it requires a large diameter trunk, straight, 50-60 feet to the first branch, and if the tree is in an urban setting, they may discard the first 30 feet for fear of metal. If the tree is in the backyard, unless you have great access, often the only way to take out a sizeable log is over the house with a crane. Logs can be chainsaw or bandsaw milled, and if metal is found, the teeth/blades are resharpened and the metal is removed. BUt in a commercial mill, the saws are a lot more costly, and no operator is willing to risk a million dollar saw on a log, even an oak log,. Pics can tell us a lot -- show scale of the trunk, closeups of the fungus and the bark and pics of tree and crown and trunk.

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