sammy wrote in news:1179099510.435410.220440
@w5g2000hsg.googlegroups.com:

I have a beautiful old oak tree in my back yard (mid-atlantic area)
with a circumference of about 13 feet.
Lately, it seems to be less productive. ie in the fall, it doesn't
drop as many leaves as it used to and in the
spring, it takes longer to reach full bloom than any other similar oak
in the area.

As I'm not prepared to take a core sample, I don't know how far apart
the annual rings are so I can only
make a rough guess as to its age. I'm assuming it's 130-200 years old,
Can anyone verify that number?

Is it's slowness to regenerate a sign of age? stress? or irrelevant?

Thanks

What's around it? Other trees? A house? A driveway? Is it fighting
for nurishment because there isn't enough free ground area to provide it
with the large amounts of food/water that it needs? Our neighbors can't
figure out why their large old Maple is struggling. There's a house 15'
away, a driveway over half of the root system and four -- count them FOUR
-- very large trees that have roots that come within the old Maple's
dripline. It simply isn't getting what it needs to sustain its size.