Answered for McCordsville, Hancock County.
A fruiting body is the reproductive organ of a fungus that has already been eating the inside of the tree for years. By the time anything shows on the outside, decay is established in the root plate or the butt of the stem — the exact structural zone that holds the tree upright. This is the one common finding where an outwardly healthy tree can come over whole, roots and all, in an ordinary thunderstorm. It is an anchorage question, not a branch question. In McCordsville — Bay Creek, Emerald Springs and Gateway Crossing included, that's normally a hazardous tree removal job at $800–$5,000. Within weeks.
Electric service is split by territory between AES Indiana (the former Indianapolis Power & Light) and NineStar Connect, the member-owned Hancock County cooperative headquartered in Greenfield that serves over 19,000 meters. Which one you have decides the line-clearance rules: AES is IURC-jurisdictional (two weeks' notice, no more than 25% removal, no topping without permission, three-day debris removal) and states an eight-year trim cycle, while NineStar as a cooperative falls outside those rules. Check the pole before assuming.
The canopy is almost entirely developer plantings on former corn and soybean ground, young enough that overall cover is thin compared with older Indianapolis suburbs; the genuinely large trees are leftovers — fencerow and creek-bottom hardwoods along Fall Creek and toward Geist, plus the yard trees around the 1865 village core. McCordsville was not in the Indiana DNR street tree sample and has no published inventory; note that Callery pear, heavily used in subdivisions of this vintage, was still legal to sell in Indiana as of 2026 despite a pending proposal to ban it.
There is no general McCordsville permit for removing a tree on private property, and Indiana has no statewide requirement — but there is a reported exception worth checking before quoting a job: in platted tree conservation areas, any tree 6 inches DBH or larger is a "Protected Tree" and may not be removed unless it is dead, diseased or damaged, or removal is needed for a government safety requirement or specified infrastructure. That provision could not be verified against a retrievable copy of the code, so confirm it with the town. Many McCordsville subdivisions also have HOA covenants layered on top.
McCordsville is unusually explicit here: under § 154.119 no one may plant a tree or allow one to grow in a dedicated public right-of-way except within a designated street tree corridor established by the town, and no tree may be planted or allowed to grow above underground utilities at all. Within those designated corridors the Town holds the power to maintain, remove and replace the trees and plantings. The section text is unverified — confirm before planting or removing in the strip.
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Distance measured from McCordsville.