OT Tree guy question

red oaks...

David Weaver

my parents' property is covered with red oaks like you describe. Most of them have gone through their full life cycle now at about 100 years old and been cut.

carpenter ants in the center are common, but I suspect rot in the tree invites them and then they work on the inside out. we would cut and split unsound red oaks when I was a kid (and then burn them in the winter). The number of ants in them sometimes was spectacular and my dad's solution to them was gasoline. I guess it made us feel like we were doing something to prevent their spread.

great firewood trees - they grow fast and make dense firewood despite fast growth.

Ants are OK

Tom Dunlap

Ants don't cause decay. In fact they are beneficial to trees. They do excavate decayed wood.

So many myths and misconceptions about trees. Cavity filling has been out of vogue for a century but people still do. Painting wounds to control decay has been out of vogue since the '80s but people still do.

Another Shigo Pithy Statement: People who don't practice modern arborculture should not be allowed to go to a modern dentist.

Re: Ants are OK

Mike L

So the ants did not cause the problem. I was having a hard time trying to figure out how many ants and how long it took to hollow out the tree that fell on my house. I think I measured it at 40 inches across with the center 15 inches was gone.

Is there a reason the Red Oaks are decaying inside out? Is there a way I can tell if the rest of them are in good shape or in trouble.

Thanks

Mike

Re: Ants are OK

David Weaver

I've read the same often since moving away. That carpenter ants find opportunity rather than creating the opportunity.

I still don't allow them here, but I don't have a very big yard, so it's not a big deal (not because of the trees, but because if I wet structural bits on the house that can be spotted, I'd rather let them have a chance at drying once found than excavated while wet and softer by carpenter ants.

As far as trees go, not sure I've ever seen a comparative bit about whether or not removing punk from the wood speeds up adjacent punk, slows it down, or does nothing. I do recall reading an article about a decade and a half ago where the author asserted that the ants don't create rot, but have a secondary effect of exposing sound wood so that it becomes punky sooner or at a slightly faster rate. Whatever the conclusion is, it won't make a difference in my yard - if the trees become unsound, they'll be addressed, and if that means replacement, then they'll be replaced.

My dad clearly thought that the carpenter ants were eating the middle of the tree rather than just taking out the garbage, but finding good info in the mid 1980s wasn't quite so easy as it is now.

I've got a japanese flowering cherry in the front yard that must be 50 years old. The supposed lifespan is 15-40. As long as I've been here (15 years), it's had an open crotch in the middle, just a little, and the branches are hollow. When one dies and I remove it, there remains an open hole at the branch end. I cut the branches so that the hole isn't facing up, but do nothing to plug it. This drives my wife bonkers. "what are you going to do about the holes in the tree?"

Other than not encouraging them to collect more water than needed, nothing.