Is something is running down my trunk — sap, or dark wet streaks an emergency?
Within weeks. Fluid leaving a trunk means internal pressure plus a path out, and what it means depends entirely on which of the above you have. Bacterial wetwood, or slime flux, is a chronic fermentation in the heartwood that builds gas pressure and pushes liquid out through any opening — unsightly, hard on the grass it runs onto, essentially untreatable, and carried by many trees for decades without decline. It is not a reason to remove a tree. Alcoholic or foamy flux is a seasonal yeast fermentation in stressed sapwood and usually passes. Sap with frass means an insect is inside. Dark bleeding from a sunken canker means an active pathogen is killing bark and cambium, and that one carries a real prognosis. Two of the four are essentially cosmetic; two are not.
What changes while you wait
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.
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