Signs a Tree Needs to Be Removed in Greenville, SC

How to tell if a tree is dying or only dormant

Autumn is a poor season to judge. Deciduous trees across the Upstate are about to drop their leaves anyway, so a tree that looks thin in October may be doing exactly what it should. The honest test comes in spring. A healthy tree leafs out alongside others of its kind; a dying one leafs out late, leafs out sparse, or greens up on the lower limbs while the top stays bare. Dieback that starts at the tips of the crown and works inward, bark loosening and dropping off in sheets, and twigs that snap dry instead of bending are the other marks of a tree that is failing rather than resting.

What to check, starting at the base

Most of the warnings worth knowing sit near the bottom of the tree, where they can be seen from the lawn without a ladder or a pair of binoculars.

• Soil heaving at the base. A lean that arrives with a mound of lifted soil, cracked ground or broken roots poking up near the trunk is a change to have looked at soon, not next year.
• Mushrooms and conks. Fungal growth on the trunk, on exposed roots or at the base usually points to decay inside the wood, and how far it has gone is hard to judge from outside.
• Cracks that go into the wood. If a pencil slides past the bark and into the wood, the crack is worth having looked at. A split where two main stems join deserves the same attention.
• Cavities and cankers. Hollows and sunken, dead patches of bark on the trunk or big limbs mean wood is missing or dying right where the tree carries its weight.

A lean that grew in vs. a lean that is getting worse

Plenty of Greenville trees lean and are perfectly stable. One that reached for light at the edge of a woodline has had decades to add wood on the side that needs it, and its crown usually bends back toward vertical. The lean to worry about is the one that changes: a trunk now brushing a gutter it used to clear, a gap opening between the root plate and the soil, fence posts on one side being shoved over. An old photo makes the comparison easy.

The Greenville trees that show these signs most

Water oaks top the local list. Clemson's oak fact sheet calls the species weaker in the wood than most oaks and notes that its trunks commonly start to rot by around age 50, so a big water oak near a house earns a careful look at its base every year. Loblolly pines seldom decline slowly; a pine that browns from the top down is usually beetle-killed and on a short clock, which the dead pine page covers in detail. Bradford pears come apart at their crowded forks as they reach middle age, with little warning beyond bark pinched into the unions.

If a tree looked fine until last week's storm and is now cracked or newly tilted, the storm damage guide is the better read. This checklist is for the tree that has been slowly going wrong for a year or more.

Remove it, brace it or keep watching

Not every warning ends with a chainsaw. A sound tree with one weak union can often be held together with a cable and brace system, and a tree with one bad limb may only need that limb taken off. The trees that belong on the removal list are the combinations: decay at the base plus a lean, a split trunk with a house or driveway underneath, a dying crown over a roof. For those, tree removal for a failing Greenville tree on a planned date is the calmer and cheaper version of the same job.

If the signs are mixed, a free look at the tree settles it, and the answer, with any price, comes back in writing from the one independent local tree company that receives your request.