Rotting Silver maple.

Durandal

Just wanted to get a few professional opinions.

I just moved into this house last august, in the front yard are two silver maples, about four feet in diameter. The North facing tree had had a low branch removed a while ago. However, the wound never healed and has rotted back into the tree. There is now standing water in it and during the warmer seasons fungus was growing in it and it was bleeding sap at the base of the trunk.

Please excuse the bad photos, it was taken during what is hopefully the last snow of the season.

Is this tree dying, or can something be done?

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Sean Freeman

I have very limited experience with silver maple, so will defer to the US guys on the tolerances of this species....however some points that apply to all species....

Hard to judge from the pics (which are nice, kind of hot and humid here...snow is good to look at!) just how large the injury is in relation to the stem, all pruning represents an injury to the tree impacted how much of an impact the specific pruning has on the tree depends on the age, health, and genetic tolerances of the tree. But first.......
If you have serious concerns you need to have someone come by and look at your trees on site....in fact if they are of any real size I would strongly advise that anyway $100/200 is a small amount to pay for peace of mind for the next 12/24 months.

The wound on your tree indicates the cut was made too close to the stem....flush in fact, the tree is struggling to close the wound..occlude, this places added stress on the tree and leaves an opportunity for other nasties insect and fungal to establish a foothold, but a healthy undermature tree will have little problem dealing with this type of injury.

The decay you can see may well (i would expect it to) extend further into the stem tissues of the trunk, however the amount of woundwood development (dounut shaped edges to the injury) seems normal. Again the consequences of the injury are to increase stresses on the tree, but a healthy tree with good soil and root environment can deal with these pressures.

The single most important aspect of your tree is the soil and the roots that grow there, so long as your tree has not had excessive cutting of live foliage from its canopy, that the limb removed did not represent more than 20% of the live tree at the time of removal, and there are not serious pest and pathogen problems in your area...I would expect a healthy undermature tree to deal with this type of injury adequately...yes it will have an impact, the tree will have the physical results of the injury for the rest of its life, and it will have shortened its expected lifespan to some degree.

My advice is as follows...

Do NOT drain the water from the injury and decay site, water in the hollow is aiding the defences of the tree, fungal pathogens do not thrive in saturated wood tissues, they require oxygen.

Do NOT paint the injury site...wound paints do nothing proven to aid in the defence mechanisms of the tree, in fact there is substantial evidence that the opposite is true.

DO ensure the soil and root volume around the base of the trees reaching out as far as possible (literally as far as you can) is free of competing plants, sealed surfaces such as bitumen, not compacted by vehicle or foot traffic, is mulched with well composted forest wood chips....healthy soil and root environment = Healthy trees.

__________________
Sean

Trees are poems that earth writes upon the sky,
We fell them down and turn them into paper,
That we may record our emptiness.
- Kahlil Gibran

treeseer

That is good closure. If you are curious (and I would be), dig out the loose funky junk and measure the cavity. Do not remove any hard tissue.

Sean is right about all that other stuff.

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Guy Meilleur | Forensic Arborist | Better Tree Care

Durandal

Thanks.

For reference, the wound is about 1 ft (30 cm) wide 2 ft (61 cm) tall and 8 in (20 cm) deep.

As for the tree, it had a healthy canopy last year, is at least 80 years old and could be as old as 105 years. Early last summer there was some inch and a half long larvae in the water.

One of my big concerns though was that it was bleeding sap at the base of the trunk this past fall.

I'll try to convince my parents to get a actual, live arborist out to look at it, as it faces west onto a empty field, and as a result leans east toward the house. It shouldn't be too hard, we need to get someone to take down a long dead silver maple in the back yard that is tall enough to reach the house if the right wind hit it.

Again, thanks.

treeseer

Water? What water? Larvae, what larvae? You can get these ID'd at your ag extension office. Or post a picture here.

Bleeding at base of trunk--picture, please? Could be Phytophthora, which is treatable.

Just because you will have an arborist removing a tree, does not mean you'll have an arborist able to diagnose and treat. Would you call Kevorkian to patch up a sore?

Pruning is SOP to fix leaning trees.

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Guy Meilleur | Forensic Arborist | Better Tree Care

treevet

I think certified arborist is a key qualifying word here. Check credentials and references. If tree is leaning towards house it is a threat because of the location of the fault (extent of decay can be quantified) and this is a typical flex/failure point. Just take a walk in the woods and you will see what I mean.

Silver maples are banned for planting in any growing spaces here in the city of Cincinnati, Ohio. Reason is because of the propensity for limb failure as they are weak wooded and they grow out of typical architecture (out of bounds until they fall apart). Roots are also very aggressive and troublesome.

Bad storms usually are described by newspapers by limbs on cars, homes, etc.
A trained eye as an arborist has will most often notice the jagged cut leaf pattern of the silver maple in many pictures year after year, storm after storm.

Not telling you to cut tree down, just look for some mitigating treatments if tree is safe to keep.

As for the mulch recommendation, good advice, but make sure if possible mulch was not attained from chipping trees (maple, etc) that contain verticillium wilt as there is no cure for that and likely would infect your tree if it does not already have it (possibly like the rear maple that died).

treeseer

Dave, a lot of certified arborists have no clue about risk management and are inflamed by species bias and sawdust lust.

Many silver maples are strong specimens with low risk of failure; it's all in how you manage them.

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Guy Meilleur | Forensic Arborist | Better Tree Care

treevet

This is true Guy, but it is good to know trends/propensities as often they are not managed from immaturity. Trees are genetically programmed to live in the woods with excurrent structure. Silver maples seem to have more problems than most when pulled out and they attain the inevitable decurrent form (if not managed as you mentioned). They grow so quickly that often they become a money making ploy for the unscrupulous drastically severing the canopy with internodal cuts and other mistreatments that fill them with decay (hence the HO's concern on this thread).

Enjoyed visiting your website.

treeseer

Yes I would agree that removing such a large branch with an apparent flushy kind of cut borders on mistreatment. However, the poster's measurement does not indicate the tree is "fill"ed with decay, but it just has a pocket at this point. What is done with the roots will determine the spread of decay. HO'd other concern was bleeding lesion and standing water; of those should tell a tale. That thing is embarassingly retro; has not been updated for 5 years. Nothing too inaccurate, but way stale.

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Guy Meilleur | Forensic Arborist | Better Tree Care

treevet

Wasn t referring to this cavity being filled with decay and suggested it could be quantified by appropriate person. I was referring to a silver maple's future often involves contact with a hack that will perform internodal cuts, flush cuts, drop wood on the root crown, etc. because this is what they do. And this is what causes decay. And these are the trees they most often target, not just because they overgrow but also because they often are planted too near targets (homes, play areas,etc.), and also as they give the appearance of improving by this injurious treatment by triggering adventitious sprouts out of the callus immediately.

The HO ofcourse has no idea that decay causing organisms have been granted full access to their tree by this mass breach of the tree's defense system. This is what I meant by "filling" the tree with decay.

Yeah, I guess your site wasn t all that good in retrospect.

treeseer

Hah! I opened myself up to that didn't I?

re the silver maple, a picture of the whole tree showing the lean would also be nice. I think they are easy species to prune well, but I agree that often they are not.

8" of rot in a 48" tree is not much. Also I'm wondering where the guess of age 80-105 years old comes from...most of these guesses that I hear are quite high.

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Guy Meilleur | Forensic Arborist | Better Tree Care

Durandal

I based the guess on the fact that they are both larger than one I KNOW was planted in 1937, and the top end of 105 is when the house was built.

The lean of the trunks is noticeable, but barely. If I had to guess it would be less then 4º.

The bleeding sap was all around the tree, clear watery sap and coming out through the bark not through holes.

The larvae apparently were dead, my dad for some reason had decided to spray the remaining can wasp spray into the hole, and the larvae appeared the next day.

Will try to get a couple of pics of the whole trees soon.

Grizzly

To sort of answer your question, no its sort of too far from being helped. Yet for time wise since thats all I saw you'll get more time than you may expect. I've seen worse because silver maple trees that have been topped or had big limbs cut are prond to rot in my area and in most cases the lagre cuts were not sealed. Depending on what you do to it in the future, It will only get worse in those spots you showed and it will eventually hollow out. Yet when it dies completely, get rid of it. once it dies the deteriation process will become more rapid, the mushrooms will start to become more vivid and will collapse which ever way the wind blows the way it want, when the day comes.

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redstree

Sometimes, weeping under a cavity is nothing more than the water seeping out and not sap at all. Water that sits in the bottom of a cavity will freeze in the winter and this can exert tremendous pressure on the wood, sometimes splitting it enough to allow the water to seep out.

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Drive a MINI, the most fun you can have with your trousers on.

treevet

To make a bit of a provocative statement for discussion consider this.....

Isn't calling a qualified arborist with directions to treat a silver maple that has extensive (for discussion-has not been evaluated yet) basal decay and a large limb over the house that is about to fall off (again for discussion) ..........somewhat like catching a rat in a trap in your house, taking it to the veterinarian, having it's leg fixed, bringing it back and letting it go?

I know Treeseer wouldn't see it that way.

But consider it from both aspects. What if the animal trapped was a cute little feral kitty cat. We'd be falling all over each to save the pussy just like they do when one falls down a sewer pipe . After the news is gone, straight to the shelter for a dose of gas.

Anyway, both organisms have apparently earned the reputation they wear. The rat for obvious reasons and the silver maple for the havoc it is associated with (and not innocently). They hold their leaves late into the early winter and get them way too early in spring. Wet snow is held by this foliage and the weak wooded and out of bounds growth has branches raining like cats and dogs.
Decay spreads very easily through them and the roots are an issue often.

It is a matter of being in the wrong place at the wrong time with the wrong characteristics.

Can anyone have sympathy for such ineptness?

Durandal

here are the pics of the trees.

I also noticed that on the wounded tree there is another wound higher up (too high for me to photograph) right at a sharp bend in a limb hanging over a telephone cable.


I also was poking around in the wound as per treeseer's suggestion, and the soft tissue goes about 15 inches deep.

At this point I'm just gunna advise my dad to get an estimate to have both trees removed, he's always wanted to replant some elms in the area anyways.



Yes, it was garbage day.

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