Should I remove or save my ginkgo?
Ginkgo isn't a habitual problem species, so a sound one is usually worth an opinion before it comes out. Ginkgo is about as close to a maintenance-free large shade tree as central Indiana gets — it shrugs off compacted clay, road salt, alkaline builder fill and narrow tree lawns, and it carries essentially no pest or disease list. So when a ginkgo generates a phone call, the problem is almost never the tree's health; it's fruit, an uncorrected fork, or a tree planted somewhere it will outgrow.
How to tell which one you've got
A genuinely declining ginkgo is rare and the cause is almost always mechanical: a girdling root, a root flare buried under builder fill, or trunk damage from a mower or string trimmer. Stress reads as short annual shoot extension and small pale leaves; if the tree leafs out fully and goes gold in November, it is not dying no matter how sparse it looked in July.
The structural question
One of the better ice performers in central Indiana — branch attachments are wide-angled and the wood holds up under loads that break silver maple and Callery pear outright, and it is rated storm-resistant in urban tree evaluations. The failures that do happen are at old codominant unions on trees that never got structural pruning, not whole-limb tearouts.
Related
- How much does it cost to remove a ginkgo?→
- When should a ginkgo be pruned?→
- Are ginkgo roots a problem for foundations or pipes?→
- Is my ginkgo dying or just stressed?→
- How does a ginkgo hold up in a storm?→
- How much does it cost to remove an american basswood?→
- Should I remove or save my american basswood?→
- When should an american basswood be pruned?→