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I'm posting these photos on the tree forum in hopes that someone with expertise might point me in the right direction in terms of what is wrong with our Douglass Fir trees. We have about 30 large, old firs and many of them have these issues:
The lower bark comes off easily in large pieces. When the bark is pulled off, there is webbing behind the piece. In one photo below you can see this webbing and also some sow bugs that have nested there. This problem was discovered when my son shot a practice arrow at a tree and it dislodged a large piece of bark.
There is what looks like bark 'dust' at the bottom of the tree, sometimes quite a bit of it. It is reddish brown and looks like the stuff ant hills are made of. But no ants in these.
I see small holes in the bark of some trees. This is shown in some of the photos below. The holes are very round and some are higher than my head, some are closer to the ground. They are not the kind of holes I would expect to see from, say, a sapsucker or woodpecker.
Sap is running from several trees. I understand that this may not be a bad thing, considering that if the tree has been injured in some way the sap is a protective feature. I am worried about Douglas Fir beetles and also about root rot. Last winter during a wind storm one of our neighbor's trees fell and it looked like the tree had just snapped in two about 6 feet up from the ground. The wood looked as though termites had been at it, but we couldn't find any termites. I actually have some photos of the downed tree that I saved, having a feeling I might need them someday. I've posted a couple below and labeled them as such.
The year before, another neighbor's fir tree did the same thing, but I didn't get a look at it. Our neighborhood has many old growth firs and cedars. In general, they protect each other from the wind by the fact that there are many of them together. But if there is something wrong with my trees, they are going to pose a danger to us and to our neighbors. I would really like to save them if possible. We're talking about big, old trees here.
I figure I need to get an arborist out here to look at them, but frankly I do not know who to trust. The last person who came out to look at the trees just wanted to take all of them out because he is more of a tree 'cutter' than a tree 'saver' and he thought any tree near a house is a potential 'widow maker'. I'm not going to take out 30 or more old trees. So I need someone who can give me a really reasonable idea of what I'm up against here.
This first photo if of the tree that lost the bark when the arrow hit it. The arrow did not stick into the bark. You can see the 'dust' at the bottom, and also you can see a hole toward the left side of the trunk.
Click the image for an enlarged view.
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