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| I've been watching a green ash in the house yard drop limbs and twigs ever since 2009 when I bought the place. Its been on my list of things to remove. Finally got that done a couple weeks ago, cost a kilobuck, I also took out a walnut closer to the house and dead cedar from the wind break and a magnolia growing through the deck. All were damaged.
The ash tree was the tallest object on a couple sections and I believe it took lightning strikes on occasion to do damage to it. Some of the limbs that broke off were hollow and left stubs. The tree guys used a man lift and cut off the limbs and the top down to about 14 feet tall, and some of them were hollow yet looking good on the outside. The trunk was too heavy for their skid loader so they cut it into three pieces. The stump is 52" across, I counted 74 rings though I didn't clean it to be certain. The pieces of trunk looked cracked and when they touched the cracks with the forks on the skid loader the trunk pieces split instantly and showed about a 6" diameter rotten hollow in the center of the trunk which explained the wet center of the trunk base laying on the ground.
I went to an ISU extension program on emerald ash borer a year or two ago. There they said the symptomatic dying started at the top, not the bottom like yours and mine.
The stump is only a couple inches above the ground but its split into about 6 pieces. I miss it, but now it can't fall on the house or me. Cost more than the kilobuck for all four trees but the magnolia won't be filling the gutter anymore, nor the walnut and the magnolia won't be dropping trash on the deck anymore. Still have 4 more walnuts around the property edge and one of them is dropping branches this week. Its far enough from the house that it might not need a good tree guy to get it down safely some time.
Gerald J. | |
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green ash trees looking bad
