20 Signs a Tree May Be Dangerous

Most trees that fail on Brunswick County homes gave warnings for months — sometimes years — before anything hit the roof. Homeowners just didn't know what to look for. This checklist covers the twenty most common signs, roughly in the order a certified arborist walks a yard: from the ground up.

Start at the base

• Mushrooms or shelf-like fungi (conks) at the trunk or root flare. These are fruiting bodies of decay fungi already inside the wood. Once you see them, structural loss is often well advanced.
• Heaved or cracked soil on one side of the trunk. This almost always means the root plate is lifting. A tree with visible soil heave after a storm should be evaluated the same week.
• Exposed, cut, or rotted roots — especially from recent trenching, driveway work, or storm surge. Roots you can see are roots that aren't holding.
• A missing or buried root flare. The trunk should widen where it meets the ground. If it goes straight into the dirt like a telephone pole, the tree was planted too deep or buried by fill — both shorten its life.
• Carpenter ants or sawdust piles at the base. Ants don't cause decay, but they nest in wood that's already rotting.

Look at the trunk

• A new lean — any lean that wasn't there a year ago. Old, natural leans with straightened upper growth are usually stable. Fresh leans after a storm are urgent.
• Vertical cracks or splits that open when the tree sways in wind. A crack you can slide a coin into is a serious defect.
• Large cavities or hollows. A hollow trunk isn't automatically doomed — trees can carry surprising amounts of internal decay — but hollows combined with a lean, a big canopy, or a target below need professional assessment.
• Included bark at major forks (a tight V-shape where two stems meet with bark pinched between them). These forks split apart in high wind. Very common on Bradford pears and maples.
• Bulges, seams, or oozing sap on the trunk, which can indicate internal cracks or fungal activity.

Look up into the canopy

• Dead branches larger than 2 inches in diameter. Small deadwood is normal. Big dead limbs are widow-makers.
• Hanging or broken limbs caught in the canopy. These can fall on a still day, weeks after the storm that broke them.
• More than 30–50% of the canopy is dead or bare in growing season. That's a tree in serious decline.
• Sudden thin canopy compared to last year, especially on live oaks and pines.
• Yellowing or off-color leaves out of season, or leaves that never fully leafed out in spring.

Species-specific red flags in Brunswick County

• Pines with pitch tubes (popcorn-sized blobs of resin on the bark). Southern pine beetle and Ips beetle activity kills loblolly and longleaf pines fast — often within a single summer.
• Live oaks losing large limbs on calm days. Sudden Limb Drop is real and usually points to internal stress or decay.
• Bald cypress or red maple leaning toward the house after prolonged flooding. Waterlogged root plates lose grip.

Context that turns a defect into a hazard

• A target below. A hollow tree in the middle of a field is a habitat feature. The same tree over a bedroom is a hazard. Arborists assess defect × target × likelihood — you should too.
• Power lines running through the canopy. Never trim or evaluate these yourself. Call Duke Energy or Brunswick Electric.

What to do if you're checking off multiple items

If you're nodding at three or more of these on a single tree, don't wait for the next storm. Take clear photos of the base, trunk, and canopy, note when problems started, and ask us or an ISA-certified arborist for a second opinion. Most concerning trees can be preserved with pruning or cabling — but only if someone qualified looks before the wind does.