Tree Risk Assessment

For years, we at the Treeist have spent every working day assessing, monitoring, and managing large trees near houses. Seven of our arborists have earned and continue to maintain the ISA’s qualification in Tree Risk Assessment, following the standard of arboriculture. Here’s what we’ve learned: what often worries people most about their trees is often less significant than the more subtle risk factors we occasionally discover on the same property. 

So please let us look at your trees.. There is a good chance that the knowledge we’ll leave you with will simply ease your mind. Or, when tree risk mitigation services are needed, we’ll often leave you a plan that is more budget-friendly than any head-in-the-sand alternative. 

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As an exercise–to try to convince you of the value of local tree knowledge– consider the following pairs of descriptions and try to guess which symptom in each pair is likely of higher significance.

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1. A red maple’s heavy houseward lean, or a crusty patch of dark fungal residue on the base of a hickory.
 

2. Lower canopy limbs overhanging your house, or your neighbor’s ash tree just beyond the property boundary.

3. Several elms losing all of their leaves in mid to late summer, or a small fresh crack on the oversized base of a scarlet oak.

4. An ash suddenly losing all of its leaves in late spring, or defoliating upper canopy limbs in your sweetgum in noticed in summer.

5. A large lower dead willow oak limb covered with orange fungus, or a long seam of bark between the forked trunk of a hackberry.

6. Piles of bark pieces littering the ground near your white oak in spring, or oozing wet patches attracting bees and butterflies at the base of your chestnut oak. 

7. Horizontal lines of holes and darkened bark on your sugar maple, or very fine sawdust collecting between the bark seams of your large southern red oak.

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​Answer: in each pair it is the second description that is more worrisome at face value. For what these symptoms likely mean, ask a local arborist!