Split down huge tree! Can it still live?

Please help!! This is a very old huge hackberry tree that has shown up this year with a big split down the middle. When we bought our 5 acres 4 years ago, my husband positioned our new mobile home so this tree would be to the south of our built in back porch. Needless to say we love this tree and my husband wants to wrap or band it to try and keep it alive. I have not called in an arborist yet. Do any of you know whether or not there's a chance that a tree like this could still live? Or is doomed to die?

I hope it is not too close to your home as it looks like it is doomed. Do call an arborist though, there may still be a chance for it.

Actually the big limbs in the top left of photo are the ones that reach out toward our house. The trunk is about 30 foot away and this tree produces a lot of shade for our southwest corner. It is still very green, no signs of dying, only the split, if you enlarge the photo it's very clear. I'm afraid the weight of all the heavy limbs are going to pull it apart even quicker whatever the cause of the split may be. So I'm sure we're going to have to at least trim it back. Any thoughts??

Might be possible to get cables put in to hold it together. Expensive, though.

Resin

Heart wrenching! What a lot of character this tree has. ~sigh

You do NOT want to wrap or band the trunk - that would kill the tree. Cabling those two large interior trunks are about your only option, and they would need to be cabled quite high up to help at all.

The open area of the crack is not a death sentence. It is a result of poor conformation of the V-crotch of the two main trunks from back when the tree was very young, and should have been pruned then. Leaving the crack alone allows it to stay dry, and form some wound wood there (but it'll never close the crack). Covering it would hold moisture inside. Banding the trunk would be like putting a tourniquet around your neck - not a good choice.

Cables are used to reduce the amount of swaying and spreading that the two main trunks are doing, mainly due to wind. The crack didn't just show up. It is a result of the movement of the crown of the tree, and the poor points of attachment along the trunk paid the price.

That old hackberry (Celtis occidentalis) can live a very long life yet - as long it doesn't catastrophically split in half.

To Viburnum Valley, Thanks for your knowledgable input, I will pass this along to my husband. He had mentioned the word chains in our discussion earlier but I don't know how high up he was planning for them to go. I'm sure he has cables as well. Your help has given me new faith. Everything I had found online about trees splitting in half was to "cut them down and use them for fire wood". What a waste for this magnificent tree if there's hope!! Thanks so much. Any more help is greatly appreciated!

You are welcome.

Consult with a professional arborist, and get some idea of the options and the associated costs. You may be less thankful when the $$ start adding up, but it is not possible to recreate the shade and ambience you have - without the investment of many years.

well my grandpa had an elm tree with a huge crack lust like that and he called an arborist that attached the limbs together with wire so that it couldnt crack anymore. now its still strong and healthy!!

I wanted to show you how somebody repaired their splitting pin oak. This tree is growing in the subdivision next to ours. The tree split last Sep 2008 during Hurr. Ike.

here is a wide view pic of tree. I was playing w/ my photo editor, and tried to put an arrow pointing to the screws.

Can you imagine cruising by that with a riding mower, and inadvertently hooking a body part on the end of one of those?

Ouch.

If anyone visits with whoever installed that arrangement, they should mention the opportunity to be creative (out of necessity). The bolting together "need" could create a work of art, or something simply functional (like steps to aid in climbing).

Of course, that leads to more potential lawsuits...

I had the same thought Viburnum, there is a definite need to make this visible to anyone, either by art or couldn't they be cut off so that there would not be anything sticking out?

They repaired a tree in that fashion on an episode of Gardening by the Yard. Yes the bolts can be cut off, but the tree needs to be marked somehow so that in the future the bolts don't endanger someone cutting it down with a chainsaw.

Hmmm . . . you may very well have TWO trees there. Take a look at the pic I attached. We were told by an arborist about 19 years ago that this silver maple (look way in the back to the left) was actually TWO silver maples growing side by side. Yours looks kind of similar, especially with the girdling root I see there, from the left tree to the right tree. Ours has that, too.

Except for pushing each other out (possibly corrected by cabling, as we did ours on arborist's suggestion), I really don't think it's a problem. They each have their own root system and structurally, they seem to WANT to be OK as they both look healthy.

You know . . . it almost looks like they want a bit of space between them. Viburnum Valley, I know you're pretty knowlegable . . . this sounds kind of far fetched, but just maybe . . . keep them apart as far as the split, let them grown like that and maybe put some wound salve (not real up on that stuff) on the inside of the split . . . ??? What do you think? Just let them do what they're doing?

My son repaired one like that with the rods . Used stainless steel and put a stainless plate on b4 the nut . Both sides That was 8 yrs ago and the plates are almost buried in the trunk now . Tree was a hugh ash , I think . Every house on that block had the same trees in front .His rods didn't stick out and he had a brick planter around it , about one foot high . Doesn't have to worry about it now , he sold the house last month .

Just FYI - shortly after buying this place, one of the trees in the yard did this splitting thing. Just to buy us some time, we put a truck hauling chain (had it's own hook on it) around the limbs. The split was at about 8-9 ft, the chain put around 20-25 ft.

It's now 30 years later. The tree is growing into the chain a bit, and some limbs have not gotten circulation, but other limbs are doing just fine. I can't remember what type of tree it is. This is likely only an example of idiots stumbling on a solution, and definitely not the preferred way to treat a tree, but I still have shade in that spot.

Hmm, I really do need to start getting another tree growing in that general area. lol

You do what you have to do . If it works , then who's to say it's wrong ? Not I . digger

There was a 100 year old elm tree where I work that had to be repaired with cabling...the cabling was barely noticeable...beautiful tree. Didn't survive the expansion project, unfortunately. Was it elm or chestnut? I think chestnut...there are a few others still standing.

Native chestnuts are for all purposes extinct now . I don't know of any left . Anything made of native chestnut is extremely expensive .Recycled wood is rare anymore .

yes, they needed special permission to cut it down. There are one or two more left there. Old old trees. Maybe I could grab a chestnut & try to grow it? They're all over the ground. When I was a kid there was a chestnut tree on our street, the chestnuts on the ground fascinated me.

Worth a try . I'd collect a bunch and see if you could get sprouts . When they sprout , roots are so deep , be hard to transplant , but if laying on top , in cups might work . Hope it works , beautiful trees , wonderful if you could salvege some of our history . digger

I was at a friends house and he had a large redbud that he had used a metal plate and screws to bolt back together and it was doing great and almost grown over the plate now.

digger, I went out to check out those chestnut trees and they're gone! I was so sad about it! I wish I had tried to grow some when I had the chance.

So sorry . Maybe you will hear about others . digger

We have successfully cabled a couple of old maples. When you cable, you should drill through the branches and not wrap around them. Hackberries have a bad tendency to split out because of the way their branches grow. The picture in the 1st post shows how big the branches are; I have seen them actually larger than the trunk! Nashville, TN is the hackberry capital of the world, I think, as they were planted as street trees 100 years ago.

By the way, there are still some native chestnuts growing on the campus of University of California-Chico in northern CA. I have planted some here in Tennessee, but doubt they will survive long.