My sister has a big old pin oak in her yard. A few days ago she noticed a bunch of weird holes in the tree's roots. They're all around the base of the tree and the openings are just a little smaller than a penny. She thought maybe it was a boring insect of some sort, so she asked an arborist to come out and take a look.
He thinks someone deliberately drilled holes in the tree to try to kill it.
Nobody has talked to her about being upset or concerned about the tree in over a decade of her living there. The tree is old and does drop limbs sometimes, so she gets it pruned every 4-5 years. A few years ago a neighbor cut off some random limbs (without talking to her about it before or after). After that she had a certified arborist prune it because she was worried he'd caused serious damage. But she didn't think anyone would deliberately try to kill the tree.
What do y'all think?
by horrorcheck
10 Comments
I’d agree with the arborist. There are no beetle borers for oaks that are this large in North America, to my knowledge. If it were a maple it could’ve been Asian Longhorned Beetle, but naaah
Get a wyze cam from amazon and point it at the tree from a secret place inside to catch the culprit
Judging by the uniformity of the hole, its location on on of the base roots, lack of any other holes above root level, and neat pile of sawdust at the base, I’d say that this was drilled intentionally so that someone could dump something in there to kill the tree.
!RemindMe 6 hours
Hopefully no one sprayed herbicide inside those holes
Hey arborists, is it this? https://youtube.com/shorts/sgGhAjpD6xA
(I’m not an arborist.)
I think the guy who previously cut the tree decided to get rid of it completely by poisoning the tree.
Looking at the burning on the leaves of the plants in the photos, it appears some herbicide may have already been applied.
I’d monitor those over the next couple of days as an early indicator
Looks like someone purposely drilled holes to kill the tree, ive seen this before at houses usually done by a hateful neighbor or even other companies trying to sabotage and force a removal.
Remindme! 2 weeks