Three Signs Of Tree Disease

Tree disease can be hard to spot, and if left unchecked for a long enough period of time, can quickly spread from tree to tree throughout your yard and garden, causing all sorts of damage and even killing your trees. Fortunately, there are a few early warning signs of tree disease that you can watch out for so that you can contact a tree removal specialist early to remove the tree before it can cause issues for the rest of your yard.

Missing Patches of Bark

The first sign that your tree may be suffering from a disease is if individual pieces of bark have started to fall off of the main trunk or individual branches. Bark's main purpose is to protect your tree from physical damage, so small sections of missing bark on their own likely point to some sort of environmental damage. However, if bark is missing in multiple places across the surface of your tree, and the pieces that have fallen off have taken leaves with them, you may have a disease problem that needs to be addressed.

Dead Limbs

If allowed to progress further, tree diseases can begin to kill individual limbs and branches in your tree. You'll be able to tell when a tree branch has died because all of the leaves will turn orange and fall off out of season, and will never regrow. The wood of the branch can begin to dry out and become brittle, cracking in multiple places. In fact, the wood itself can actually start to rot, which can then quickly spread throughout the rest of the tree. This is also a fairly serious safety concern, since a dead branch or limb is much more likely to fall and cause damage to either you or your property.

Holes and Cracking

Beyond sections of missing bark and dead branches, which can sometimes be caused by physical damage to your tree, you should also take the time to visually inspect the trunk of your tree for serious signs of rot and decay. Physically, this will usually manifest itself in the form of holes and spiderweb cracks in the main trunk, which can even cause the trunk to split at some point if extremely severe. Signs of damage to the main trunk of your tree suggest that your tree is likely suffering from to a well-established disease that has the possibility of killing the tree in the near future.

For more information, contact a local arborist.