Answered for New Palestine, Hancock County.
The shelf is a fruiting body — the reproductive structure. The organism has been living inside the wood digesting it long before anything appeared on the outside. So the shelf is not the problem, it is the announcement. The practical translation is that there is a volume of decayed wood inside the trunk or the root collar, and the real job is establishing how much sound wood remains around it and whether that remaining shell is enough to hold the tree up. In New Palestine — Willow Ridge, Centennial North and Noelting Estates included, that's normally a hazardous tree removal job at $800–$5,000. Within weeks.
Laid out in 1838 as Sugar Creek and incorporated in 1871, New Palestine's population was essentially flat from 1880 to 1990 and then more than doubled — 2,055 in 2010 to 2,744 in 2020. That leaves a thin band of genuinely old houses around Main Street and a large majority of the town built after 1990, so from the build-out pattern most yard trees should be 15 to 30 years old rather than 70.
New Palestine appears in no published street-tree inventory. Because the bulk of the housing is post-1990 subdivision on former cropland, the dominant condition is young-to-middle-aged planted stock, with ash already removed statewide by emerald ash borer.
There is no tree removal permit in New Palestine — the code has no tree removal provision for private property, and Indiana has no statewide permit. What the town regulates is planting: Chapter 55 (Ord. 51888) is reported to make it unlawful to plant trees, shrubs or any plant life other than grass between the sidewalk and the curb anywhere in town, effective May 18, 1988, with § 56.02 permitting shade and ornamental trees on your own lot at least six feet back from the front property line. None of that could be verified from a retrievable primary source — treat the planting ban as UNVERIFIED and confirm with Town Hall before planting anything in the strip.
The strip between sidewalk and curb is public and the town dictates what goes in it. The town's reported grass-only rule for that strip could not be verified, so confirm with Town Hall before planting a replacement tree there; a homeowner who wants a replacement may in any case have to put it on the lot behind the front property line.
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Distance measured from New Palestine.