nw_tree_climber
New Member
Hello, I am an arborist in Oregon. Got a call a couple of days back to look at a Douglas fir tree that was bleeding an excessive amount of pitch. The Tree is probably at least about 100 years old if not older. It is a large tree probably 5 foot diameter and 160 ft tall.
About 20 feet up looks like there is a large crack starting in the bark it is about 5 to 6 foot long traveling vertically, and it is bleeding or causing gummosis. Didn’t know if anyone has seen this before. I have inspected the tree for borers, or beetles. Didn’t see any sign of that, but they could be higher in the canopy, I have not done a climb inspection yet.
what worries me is they lost a large tree about the same caliper about 5 years ago in a massive wind storm we had. It broke off about where the crack on this one is starting, luckily that tree was not near a structure. This tree that I am concerned about has a large apartment complex on one side, and another target building on the other side of it, so it would pose a extreme hazard if something was to go catastrophically wrong.
The upper canopy looks green, not much dieback for a tree of this size, but I know it can be a common miss conception to think when a tree is green there is no internal failure points.
I am open to ideas if anyone has any ideas or advice about this situation, I will probably get an increment borer to do an internal inspection and see if there is excessive rot. But I still would like to know why there is excessive gummosis, the tree has probably pled, o I would say about a gallon of pitch at this point, quite a bit of nutrients lost.
Thanks again for reading this, and I look forward to your impute.
About 20 feet up looks like there is a large crack starting in the bark it is about 5 to 6 foot long traveling vertically, and it is bleeding or causing gummosis. Didn’t know if anyone has seen this before. I have inspected the tree for borers, or beetles. Didn’t see any sign of that, but they could be higher in the canopy, I have not done a climb inspection yet.
what worries me is they lost a large tree about the same caliper about 5 years ago in a massive wind storm we had. It broke off about where the crack on this one is starting, luckily that tree was not near a structure. This tree that I am concerned about has a large apartment complex on one side, and another target building on the other side of it, so it would pose a extreme hazard if something was to go catastrophically wrong.
The upper canopy looks green, not much dieback for a tree of this size, but I know it can be a common miss conception to think when a tree is green there is no internal failure points.
I am open to ideas if anyone has any ideas or advice about this situation, I will probably get an increment borer to do an internal inspection and see if there is excessive rot. But I still would like to know why there is excessive gummosis, the tree has probably pled, o I would say about a gallon of pitch at this point, quite a bit of nutrients lost.
Thanks again for reading this, and I look forward to your impute.
