Looking for some advice- the bark on our Maple is black in some spots, and there’s a hole in the outer bark on the other side. The tree is beautiful and I want to be sure it’s healthy! I’ll call an arborist if needed, I love this tree an inexplicable amount.
by the_throw_away4728
4 Comments
If it’s valuable to you call an arborist
Looks like it’s been taken Hosta-ge.
If you get advice from an arborist, try not to get too sappy when you hear the news
Yes, there’s a good amount of decay and bark-peel happening here. Fortunately, there’s also a good amount of compartmentalization occurring as well. This means 1) The damage is a few years old and the tree was able to survive whatever initially happened to it (lightning strike?). And 2) it seems to have the available resources to begin “healing” itself.
However, it’s important to understand that there is no magic fix for your tree. The damage is done. Your job as a concerned owner at this point is to give it the best opportunity to mitigate the decay as quickly as possible on its own.
I would definitely recommend getting the tree on a yearly monitoring cycle by a certified arborist. That doesn’t mean yearly pruning. It just means having one set of trained eyes keeping track of growth, die back, and the spread of decay. They will be able to better judge when the time comes for any necessary risk mitigation or soil amendments/growth regulators.