From afar it looks similar to cases of old Biscogniauxia I’ve seen, but have no idea if it can grow to these depths or even colonize hemlocks. Or what it looks like on the inside.
So I returned to the job site and did some more poking around. I popped one of the plates off with a flathead, it came off fairly easily. Texture inside was dry and flaky and full of galleries containing what appeared to be a couple different species of insects, and a whole lotta poop(?). The...
Wish I had, but I was just passing by on a job site so couldn’t dwell too long. Must be fungal but it had such a bark-like appearance and texture that it kind of threw me for a loop. It’s like a bark-gall.
on a site visit I’d pin that as a sugar maple all day. until taxonomists reach a consensus I’ll stick with the most distilled answer, which in this case would just be calling it a sugar.
would you guys root prune this? seems to be some root-girdling-root action but I also feel like sugar maples...
I stumbled past a Siebold's viburnum at a botanic garden a few days ago and the winter buds looked similar to yours. They apparently get pretty tall too.