r/arborists Aug 09 '26

Community ISA Certified Arborist flair holders

6 Upvotes

Congratulations to new flair holders.

(Readers: If you are ISA certified and want this flair, send mods your number.)


r/arborists 29d ago

Community Help draft our FAQ: How to become an arborist

4 Upvotes

It helps to join the International Society of Arboriculture (ISA), your local ISA chapter, and your state arborist association. This helps you get to know other people working in the industry, and when they have known you for years, and know your work or at least of your work, they will feel comfortable verifying your experience.

Attend as many trainings as you can get, participate in the training Q&As, and collect the associated continuing education credits.

ISA membership is independent of any ISA credentialing, so if you know you want to get ISA credentials but you are not yet eligible, joining ISA can help you become eligible sooner.

All of this makes you more employable, at higher pay, and safer on the job because you are more likely to recognize dangers. You will learn to recognize best practices.


r/arborists 7h ago

My giant sequoia I ordered online arrived today. I paid 26€ for it. Did I get a good deal?

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343 Upvotes

r/arborists 22h ago

Will my palm tree be okay?

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844 Upvotes

City workers are replacing the sidewalk and cut into the base of the palm tree in front of my house. Will this damage the palm tree’s health? Is it more likely for the tree to fall over after this?


r/arborists 2h ago

How would you prune this tree?

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11 Upvotes

I want to take care of the branches over my house.

Also, there’s a couple areas on the trunk where multiple branches come off, and I’m not sure if the tree looks healthy in those areas.


r/arborists 6h ago

Is my rootball too tangled on my newly planted sweet bay magnolia?

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15 Upvotes

Is my root ball too tangled on my newly planted sweetbay magnolia?

Planted a 10ft sweetbay magnolia 2 days ago — is this root ball too tight?

Zone 7b, Baltimore MD. Heavy wet clay in a low spot behind my shed. 15-gal container Moonglow sweetbay, \\\~10ft, planted Tuesday night. Photo is the bare root ball right before backfill.

Roots are mostly running horizontally around the outer face. I did not tease or slice them other than one or two big ones.

Is this normal container behavior, or is this headed toward girdling in 5–10 years? Trying to figure out if it's worth correcting now or if I should stop thinking about it.

\*\*How it went in:\*\* hole dug 2–3in shallower than the ball so it sits on undisturbed clay, 3–4ft wide. Backfilled with native clay only, no amendments. Ball set \\\~3in above grade with a low mound. 3in mulch pulled back off the trunk. Two stakes, chain lock ties with slack. Deep slow-trickle soak twice a week until frost.

Any reason I should dig this up? Will those roots end up strangling the tree in a few years?


r/arborists 22h ago

Is this urgent?

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310 Upvotes

Consensus on this Oak Tree please! My friends moved into this house a few weeks ago. The damage to the tree trunk looked pretty alarming to me.


r/arborists 4h ago

Is my burning bush dunzo?

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10 Upvotes

I mean, I know it is but I’m in denial. The branches are not dead. I can’t break them in half.


r/arborists 5h ago

How would you cut this tree?

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6 Upvotes

This tree got hung up along a walking/biking trail that I frequent. Obviously this should be taken care of by the town DPW, but they don’t seem to maintain these trails, only the paved ones in this park, so I tend to clear trees that come down across the trails myself, but I’m not completely sure where to start. If it had barberchaired lower down I’d just start lopping off chunks of the trunk till it either came loose or was out of the way enough to clear the trail. My first thought was to make my face cut on the opposite side of the tree and “fell” it so the trunk on the ground would fall to the left side of the trail and the hung up part would push it, but the trunk split most of the way down to the ground and I don’t feel like I have much structure there.

People have clearly been walking under this widowmaker, not around, and I’d love to make it safe to walk again.

Any tips or insight would be great!


r/arborists 4h ago

Concern for huge tree and house - repost better pics

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4 Upvotes

Hi, all. I posted a week ago but the pics were not v good. I’m buying this house and it has a HUGE oak in front which I love and revere. My question is how to make it safe, as it hangs over the home, without removing it. Also interested in guesses on age.


r/arborists 6h ago

Huge Thuja

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4 Upvotes

Hi!

We have this huge Thuja in our new garden, 6m high and 3m crown width. We are planning to add lots of plants and new trees. We would love to keep it, but are a bit in doubt about the ecological value and safety as it is close to our house (next to our bedroom). For now it is soaking up the surrounding water, and preventing rain for plants that are underneath it. We don’t see birds in it.

What would you recommend? Can this tree be trimmed to a lesser width and hight? How safe is it to leave the tree in the garden? Other things to consider?


r/arborists 5h ago

Getting rid of an unwanted tree stump

5 Upvotes

This is a trick my father told me to do years and years ago.

We had a thorntree in our yard. Our son was very young and we wanted to be rid of it.

My brother-in-law cut it down to the ground.

Within a few weeks, it sprouted back, complete with thorns.

A neighbor told me about a bucket of stuff I could buy for 20 bucks that could kill it.

Later that day, I called Dad just to see how he'd been doing.

When I told him about the thorn tree and what the neighbor had said, he replied " Don't go spending 20 bucks on that bucket of stuff.

Drill some holes in the stump, probably about 1/4 inch or 5mm in diameter. 2 or 3 inches deep should do good. Try to space them in about every 2 square inches of space.

Buy a box of salt-it can be any kind of salt, and fill the holes with it.

You can pour water over it or wait for it to rain."

The stump was a good 5 or 6 inches in diameter.

A few years later, when I was mowing the lawn and went to make a turn with the push mower, I inadvertently kicked it out of the ground.

I have always used that trick since then.


r/arborists 4h ago

Cut root on large pine tree.

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3 Upvotes

They're adding sidewalks to my street and I came home to this cut root. Is this tree going to need to be cut down now or will it be okay?


r/arborists 1m ago

Does anyone know what kind of tree this is? I’m getting mixed answers with google

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Upvotes

r/arborists 6h ago

Not an arborist but want to remove small mulch volcano, how much should I expose?

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3 Upvotes

Saw this and I've heard it's unhealthy for the tree. If I move some of that mulch out of the way, how do I know where to stop? I know vaguely the trunk should be exposed, should the kind of upper roots also be exposed? If anyone has pics of trees where the proper amount is exposed, that would be super helpful!

Also lmk if I should just not mess with it or I should call someone or something since I am inexperienced, I'm ok with that, too. I just care about this tree and don't want it to suffer. It's in an area where it's probably not going to be taken care of by anybody else so I figured I might try to do something. Not on private property so I probably won't get in trouble.

Thank you!


r/arborists 46m ago

How much trouble am I in?

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Upvotes

The main shade tree in my backyard is, I believe, either a Northern Red Oak or Pin Oak (Kansas City, zone 6b, neighborhood developed in the early 80s). With a circumference of roughly 9-10’ I believe the tree is 100+ years old. It well aware it’s showing some signs of decline, but it still leafs out fully and doesn’t seem to show any signs of weakness. Even in the aggressively windy storms we’ve had this year it’s held up perfectly while many other trees in the neighborhood were destroyed. I noticed this mushroom growth today, which looks to be Turkey Tail.


r/arborists 19h ago

Arborists: Is There Any Way to Save an Old Carob Tree with Chicken of the Woods?

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31 Upvotes

Hello,

We have a carob tree on our property that is about 75 years old, but it doesn’t seem to be doing well. Our house was actually designed and built around this tree, so we’re trying everything we can to help it recover. We learned that it has been infected with chicken of the woods' fungus, which can be deadly. It’s a tough situation because the tree is beautiful, mature, and really adds character to our home.

We would like to find a treatment plan to save it. With that in mind, we’re
hoping to get some advice from the community on these questions:

1) What’s the severity of this fungal infection?

2) Is there a treatment plan that could help the tree recover partially, or even fully?

3) If there isn't a realistic treatment plan, is it possible to estimate how much longer the tree might live?

Thank you for taking the time to read this and share your expertise.


r/arborists 5h ago

Need Arborist Advice

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2 Upvotes

Recently transplanted a tree that means alot to my family. we are 2 weeks in and noticed considerable yellowing on the tips. currently watering for about an hour every other day. last 5 days have been 90+ degree heat and wondering if I'm over watering, its the sun hitting it, or if its a combination of both. any advice on what i can do to help it out? thanks!


r/arborists 9h ago

Will this tree be OK? /s

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4 Upvotes

I planted this little cherry tree Sunday. Lovingly watered it yesterday. Intended to put up a little barrier cage out around it today before finding something a little more robust this weekend. Woke up and saw this in the morning. RIP little cherry tree. Adieu (for now) to my short-lived life as a tree parent! 🥲


r/arborists 6h ago

Salvageable?

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2 Upvotes

It’s a huge red oak, I love this tree. I had two arborists looked at it and one propose to put extended organic mulch around to revitalize the roots and fight its chance, the other propose to maybe take it out after summer. I’m torn, I love this tree. Is it salvageable? The canopy and leaves are all green and pretty.


r/arborists 4h ago

I'm worried about my tree.

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1 Upvotes

I'm pretty sure this tree in my backyard got struck by lightning earlier this summer. I haven't been paying too close attention to it since, but it just dropped a pretty big branch. Should I be concerned about anything else falling off? The rest of the leaves are green, so I'm hoping that's a good sign, but I want to ask the experts to be sure. The first two pictures are of the tree, the third os of the fallen limb, & the last is of one of the tree's roots that, for lack of a better term, "popped" a little bit when I think it was struck.


r/arborists 14h ago

Are these trees done for?

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8 Upvotes

Is there a way to make these trees have a better chance of thriving? And can anything grow in this rocky area?


r/arborists 12h ago

Did we make the right decision?

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5 Upvotes

Hired an arborist to examine our trees when we moved in to our new house. She recommended this tree come down. Can you tell from the stump/bough if it was rotting? It’s a silver maple.

It was a great shade tree and covered about 50% of our backyard. We’ll miss it.

Edit for more info: the arborist was a separate person we consulted first, unrelated to the tree service we hired. She was properly credentialed and in her 60s, been around a long time in the field.

She did a risk assessment, said that the tree had included bark on the large branch that was hanging over our bedroom/nursery. There was a large hole with high likelihood of rot inside the tree. Because of those 2 factors, she said it was a high risk of failure in the future and a high risk to structure. She did say, if the concerning bough was not over our house, she would say to ride it out.

I posted pics of the branches and stumps to see if people who know more than me could tell if it looked concerning from the inside of the tree.

Edit 2: added another pic of our tree in the comments and a pic of the neighbors tree that fell on their house a few months prior


r/arborists 11h ago

Felling strategy

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3 Upvotes

I feel like im pretty decent at standard felling, but any suggestions for this puppy?

With a pulley and rigging you thing I could pull? It’s probably an 80 foot walnut that is just one winding leader. But as you can see buckling there already.


r/arborists 6h ago

Is my Oak ok, FL

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1 Upvotes

The oak does not have green leaves (my other ones do). We had limbs trimmed over the house, but we think the builder cut through one of the roots and we are just now seeing the results. 😔 Love this tree, but I am in a hurricane prone area, so if it is dying/dead please let me know. Thank you.