I've been noticing around town that the large, mature (24" dbh 75' tall) beech trees always die from the tops down. A lot of the yards with these large beech are at least somewhat wooded properties. With the yards being mostly bush lots they host a lot of sugar maple, american beech, and ash. Few other species handle the shade.
But every beech in town has identical decline through the crowns from yard to yard and street to street. As well the lower canopy and regen lower down is compromised very highly of sugar maple very very few or no beech except the big dying ones.
So far we do a lot of crown reduction of the dead wood to keep things safe or full removals of the trees. There is no sign of any fruiting bodies, wood pecker damage, no paticular bore signs that I've been able to distinguish so far.
There is a good sized squirrel population in town but I didn't think that that would explain 0% repopulating of beech as well the trees declining/ dying the same all over make we wonder if there isn't a real problem around that I really need to know more about.
Unfortunately I can't give site specifics because it varies from front yard by the street to undisturbed wood lots. If you have any questions or ideas to narrow something down I'll answer each specific one. Thank you for your help with this.
But every beech in town has identical decline through the crowns from yard to yard and street to street. As well the lower canopy and regen lower down is compromised very highly of sugar maple very very few or no beech except the big dying ones.
So far we do a lot of crown reduction of the dead wood to keep things safe or full removals of the trees. There is no sign of any fruiting bodies, wood pecker damage, no paticular bore signs that I've been able to distinguish so far.
There is a good sized squirrel population in town but I didn't think that that would explain 0% repopulating of beech as well the trees declining/ dying the same all over make we wonder if there isn't a real problem around that I really need to know more about.
Unfortunately I can't give site specifics because it varies from front yard by the street to undisturbed wood lots. If you have any questions or ideas to narrow something down I'll answer each specific one. Thank you for your help with this.
