Scott wrote:
I just bought a house and among the great trees there is a large pecan
tree with one large dead branch. I have posted a pictu
http://scottmartin.net/temp/2005.07.08-10:52:34.jpg

The limb on the left is completely dead. There are no live branches
coming from it, and fungus is growing on it. It has to come down,
because if it falls, it might take out the fence and my neighbor's
storage shed. My question is, is this tree salvagable without that
limb? It seems to me that without that branch, most of the weight
(two other live branches) will be on the right side of the tree. Will
that be a problem? Will the tree immediately fall over in the other
direction?

If I should cut off the dead branch, where should I cut it? It appears
to be dead all the way to the main trunk, but I can't really be sure
where the line is. Of course, if its length is just cut in half, the
hazard disappears.

Thanks in advance to anyone who has any ideas. This is my first house
and my first gardening endeavour, so I will probably be in here a lot.


In my extremely unqualified opinion, things look grim for the tree. From
the photo, it looks like the 2nd live branch has also been hacked at the
top and may give up the ghost eventually. If there were a genuine chance
of saving the tree, qualified advice would tell you to cut off the dead
limbs flush down to the live part so it can heal over eventually.

However, another line of reasoning (to which I credit my ecofriendly
hubbie, who was wondering what that picture was on my monitor) might
suggest that since the tree has a slim shot at long-term survival
anyhow, you might just cut off enough of the dead limbs to eliminate the
hazard to the neighbor's shed, and otherwise let the limbs rot and
fester just as they would in the wild, as a haven to the sort of
wildlife that enjoys that habitat--including some interesting backyard
birds like woodpeckers, nuthatches, wrens, and tits who like to feed on
insects in the bark. Standing deadwood is often woefully absent from the
well-groomed suburban ecology.