Maple with a rotten core

Took down two smaller trees yesterday and did a ton of heavy bucking, nothing too exciting but this one is noteworthy for some of the stories its old mangled wrangled bark tells.

This tree has suffered a lot of stress impact over the years and damage to the inside, most likely from lightning strikes. It's already lost its top and most of the upper canopy which is good given the state of the main trunk section.

Whatever caused it somewhere along the way probably the heartwood stopped getting the minerals it needed to fight off infestation and it took over killing and then destroying the heartwood long ago.

I know this happened long ago because I can see not only the decay of the tree all the way down to the sapwood which detached nearly a quarter of the trunk leaving it in place only through of small section of long since dead and dried wood well into the various stages of rot.

Additionally the massive fissure wound clearly appears to be the remains of a lightning furrow, caused by a lighting strike followed the trees process of compartmentalizing the area, creating these 'doorposts' (you can see the one on the right of the fissure at the end of the video, I rest my thumb on it momentarily) to support the furrowed area to maintain the structure of the tree and support the upper weight.

However these particular door posts you can see horizontal lines on, and this is a sign of stress buckling, caused by press down from above meaning not sufficient interior wood to support the weight of the tree and thus the doorposts began buckling aka creeping-fracture, which means the tree is in the process of structural failure.

Which is why it was a good thing the owner had me take this one down, as this one was not an "if" but a when as with regards to failure.

Worse when it does it would collapse downward as the base blows out, like a building demolition from the ground up.

Even worse, it would most likely happen when it gets an external nudge, like the wind blowing, or a horse rubbing it, or even the weight shift of a horse standing beneath it. And since this is a horse paddock that is of concern.

Removing it was the right call.