Should I remove or save my american hornbeam?
American Hornbeam isn't a habitual problem species, so a sound one is usually worth an opinion before it comes out. This is the small native that almost never generates a storm call — dense, windfirm wood on a 20-30 ft frame means it sits under power lines and beside patios without failing. It shows up on quotes for clearance pruning, for removal after construction damage, or because someone misidentified it as a beech; genuine hazard removals on hornbeam are rare.
How to tell which one you've got
The usual presentation is marginal leaf scorch in July and August — this is a drought-intolerant understory tree, and a west-facing lawn planting in stripped subdivision clay browns at the leaf edges every dry summer. That version re-leafs normally the next spring; what says dying is a spring flush that never fills the crown, whole-limb dieback, and dead bark running down one side of the fluted trunk.
The structural question
Forest Service silvics calls it very windfirm, and the wood is hard enough that ice bends it rather than snapping it, making it one of the better performers in an Indiana ice event. When one does fail it is almost always the multi-stem form — two or three codominant stems with included bark at the union splitting apart, or a whole leaning stem letting go in saturated clay.
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