Changed my mind about leaving big dead limbs on oaks after seeing a 3 year difference

I used to be one of those guys who thought leaving a big dead limb on a white oak was fine, let nature take its course and all that. But I had a client in Norfolk who wanted me to clean up this 50 year old oak in their front yard. I talked them into letting one big 6 inch limb stay for habitat value. 3 years later that limb rotted at the collar and dropped through their porch roof during a storm. Cost them way more than removal would have. Now I deadwood anything over 2 inches within reach of a structure. Anyone else had a specific failure change their policy on something?

2 comments

2 Comments

julia28613d ago

I see what you're saying about that limb dropping through the porch, but I don't think one bad experience means we gotta strip every tree clean. I've got oaks on my own property with dead limbs that have been there for years and never caused issues, especially if they're not hanging right over something important. Seems like the real problem was letting a rotting limb hang over a structure, not the deadwood itself being bad. There's a big difference between habitat deadwood in the woods and a dead limb over your house.

jade22113d ago

Oh man, exactly. It's like someone falls off a bike once and suddenly we're banning wheels everywhere. I've got this massive oak in my backyard that's been dropping twigs and small branches for years, and the only thing it's ever hit is my patience when I have to rake them up. Meanwhile my neighbor's tree dropped a limb the size of a small car on his shed because he ignored it for a decade and a half. Context matters, right? Not everything needs to be a chainsaw massacre just because one person had bad luck with a rotten branch.