Are your trees dangerous? Our arborist tells all..

1. Tree Hazard Identification
William: Hi, I’m William Jones, qualified arborist, director of Tree and Garden Services
based on the Central Coast of New South Wales.
Today I’m at Killarney Vale. A large section has torn out of a tree and the owner has
asked me to come out and inspect their tree to see if it’s safe.
This tree is a Eucalyptus Nicholii, a narrow leaf peppermint. They’re really susceptible to
a bracket fungus, which is a wood rotting fungus, and you can see all the dead branches
in the lower part of the tree are an indicator that the tree is under a bit of stress.
Here we can see the piece that’s fallen out of the tree, and looking up into the trunk we
can see the torn out section where it’s come from. This piece on the ground is about the
same size as the rest of the tree at the top. So these two stems growing together are
called co-dominant stems, and they’re growing from the same point in the tree and
competing for the same attachment point. And you can see that the tree’s really
flattened out around where they’ve been growing together, both up there and down here.
And you can see the rub marks where the two trunk sections have been rubbing against
each other.
On a close look at this tree, we should be able to find that bracket fungus somewhere on
the tree. And, sure enough, there it is. Looking up the trunk there on the second branch
up there’s a little mushroom. I’ll take a photo of it and that will be in the post below this
video. And that’s a bracket fungus, a wood rotting fungus.
There’s also the same species next door. Looking at the crown of that tree, the foliage
is sparse and thin, a high percentage of dead wood. There’s a good chance that that
tree is suffering from the same conditions that this one was. On a close look at the trunk
you can see that the tree’s got a bit of a lean to it. And you can see a lot of the soil
mounding up behind it. It kind of looks like the root plate’s been shifting in the ground.
Included stems such as these, or multiple trunks, are a real common structural defect in
the tree. They’re easily identified; easy to pick this up from the ground. And if this
branch or tree trunk was overhanging your house or your car or in this backyard where
children play, it definitely pays to have your tree inspected at least annually by a
qualified arborist.
So our assessment of the tree shows that the rest of the tree isn’t sound, and it’s only a
matter of time before the other top half of that tree topples over. So we’re going to
recommend removing the tree, and we’ll be doing this next week, so we’ll have some
footage of that for you next week.
We offer free quotes to residential and commercial properties in the Gosford and Wyong
Shires on the Central Coast of New South Wales.
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2. So if your tree’s got any mushrooms, fungus, splits, cracks, multiple co-dominant stems,
please give me a call at 02 43846486 or contact us via our website by visiting
www.treeandgarden.com.au.
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