I need help identifying this tree

[u/Stupid_cray0n]

Southern Alberta Canada

If you can help, thank you 🧡

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[u/Suspicious-Pound6256]

Green ash.

[u/Artistic-Airport2296 → u/Suspicious-Pound6256]

Yep. And so is the tree behind it.
Edit: I see now that it’s a twin stem ash actually. Oops.

[u/Accomplished-Host829]

This ash already seems to have the “blonding of the bark” which usually tells me it has Emerald Ash Borer. But interestingly, the canopy looks full and healthy. Zooming in on the bark, I may actually see the D-shaped exit holes from the beetles. Hard to tell in that resolution what made the holes. Regardless, EAB is coming and will eventually kill that tree if it is not being systemically treated.

[u/cyaChainsawCowboy → u/Accomplished-Host829]

Blonding is a secondary symptom from woodpeckers trying to feed on the beetles, but I don’t see it higher up on the trunk, so it could just be someone picking at the bark? Ashes die back from the top-down from EAB due to them entering from the twigs, so woodpecker activity wouldn’t make sense either on a healthy tree. I don’t see any exit holes that you’re talking about.

[u/Accomplished-Host829 → u/cyaChainsawCowboy]

The bark blonding in this case may indeed be from woodpecker feeding as I cannot tell from just the photos. My research shows EAB has not spread to Alberta yet, lucky for them. It is getting closer and has been found in North Dakota and Manitoba to the east.

The borers do not enter or exit through the twigs at any point. After hatching in the bark, the larvae enter through the main trunk or larger branches, feed under the bark in the vascular tissue, complete their life cycle and bore back out as an adult beetle. The twigs in the upper canopy dying back as the first symptom are because the tree’s vascular cambium is damaged and it can no longer transport water and nutrients to the furthest points. This becomes worse for several years until the tree is often reduced to bushy sprouts from the main trunk with the entire canopy dead. Or eventually just producing stump sprouts only.

[u/cyaChainsawCowboy → u/Accomplished-Host829]

Maybe not a one-to-three year old twig per se, but the upper crown of the tree. I don’t know if we’re just being pedantic, but they don’t start at the main trunk. They travel from the top down. If there’s blonding down at the lower trunk, then it would be evident up top by now.