How much does it cost to remove a northern catalpa?
Removing a northern catalpa around Indianapolis typically runs $400 to $1,900, with most jobs near $720. Catalpa is the coarse old tree on the back fence line — heart-shaped leaves the size of a hand, orchid-like white flowers in June, and foot-and-a-half seed pods. Most catalpa quotes in central Indiana are cleanup and reduction on a 50-year-old tree that has already dropped a limb or two, because it grows fast, breaks easily, and is structurally spent about the time it gets big enough to matter.
Mature size, and the bracket it puts you in
Roughly 40 to 60 feet tall and 20 to 40 wide, fast-growing, and short-lived for its size — commonly cited at around 50 years. So a catalpa often becomes a large-tree removal price on a tree that only stood for one generation, and the wide spreading crown over a fence, alley, or garage usually forces a rigging job rather than a straight drop.
Condition changes the price
Catalpa has a brittle reputation and the wood earns it, but it actually rides out ice better than that reputation implies — the branching is coarse and open with few, thick twigs, so it accumulates far less glaze load than a fine-twigged birch or willow, and ice-damage surveys generally rank it resistant. Its real failure mode is summer wind on a big-leafed crown combined with decay in old wounds: whole limbs let go at a crotch on a humid, still-feeling day rather than under a January ice load.
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