How long can I leave something is running down my trunk — sap, or dark wet streaks before it becomes dangerous?
Wetwood is measured in decades — it will still be running down that trunk in ten years, and that is not a countdown to anything. What you are actually watching over that time is whether decay is advancing behind the ooze, which shows up as a widening cavity, punky wood, conks, and a thinning crown. A bleeding canker at the root collar moves faster: it can girdle a tree over one to a few seasons and advances further around the trunk each year, so the earlier the collar is excavated and examined, the more options remain. Borer damage compounds over a couple of seasons, and a vigorous tree can often outgrow a light infestation. None of these is a same-night call by itself. What makes oozing urgent is what it is oozing from — sap running out of a trunk that also sounds hollow, carries conks, or has an open cavity is a structural assessment this week, not a sap question.
Whether it can still be saved
For wetwood there is nothing to save it from, and the correct treatment is no treatment. Do not drill the trunk and install a drain tube — that was standard advice for decades, is now considered harmful because it opens fresh wounds into sound wood, and anyone offering it is working from an old manual. Do not carve the bark back, do not seal it, do not pour anything in. Hose the streak off if the look bothers you, keep the tree watered and mulched, prune deadwood. Foamy flux needs only that the underlying stress ease. Borers need the insect identified before any treatment, because the application window is short and timing is everything. Bleeding cankers are the case where diagnosis changes the outcome: excavating a buried root collar, correcting drainage, and in some cases a phosphonate treatment for Phytophthora are legitimate, but they are prescribed after identification, not before. Removal is warranted only when the oozing accompanies real structural loss — extensive decay, a hollow trunk with a thin shell, conks on the trunk, or a collar rotted around a substantial part of the circumference.
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