Is my silver maple dying or just stressed?
Silver maple rarely dies outright — it hollows. Stress reads as small, thin foliage with the whole crown still present, plus cottony maple scale and tar spot; genuine failure reads structurally, as decay or a cavity at a major union, a visible seam of included bark, and dieback confined to the tips of the longest limbs. Once you can put your arm into a union, that is a rigging and removal decision, not a health treatment.
Why silver maple ends up on a quote here
Silver maple is the most over-planted large tree in Indiana's street tree population — roughly 18% statewide and about 14% of Indianapolis street trees — because it was the default fast shade tree in subdivisions built from the 1950s through the 1970s. Those trees are now 50-70 years old and hitting the age where the codominant unions they grew fail, which is why silver maple lands on more central Indiana storm quotes than any other species.
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