Should I remove or save my kentucky coffeetree?
Kentucky Coffeetree isn't a habitual problem species, so a sound one is usually worth an opinion before it comes out. The number one coffeetree call in central Indiana comes in May, when the neighbors' maples are fully leafed out and this thing is still bare sticks — it is one of the last trees to leaf out and one of the first to drop, so healthy specimens get diagnosed as dead every spring. The second call is the pods, which is why the male cultivars exist.
How to tell which one you've got
Coffeetree has very few serious pests or diseases, so when one declines the cause is almost always mechanical and recent — trenched roots from a utility or irrigation run, a grade change that buried the flare, or a girdling root from a poorly planted ball. Read it by timing: bare in May is normal, but leaves that emerge undersized and pale and then thin out from the top of the crown downward through one season means the root system was cut, not that the tree is sick.
The structural question
This is the storm performer of the group — arborists rate its limb attachment and wood strength as good under ice and snow, and it comes through Indiana glaze events with far less breakage than maple, pear or basswood on the same street. The qualifier is mass: those limbs are heavy and few, so the rare failure (usually at a preexisting bad union or on a previously topped tree) drops a lot of weight in one piece.
Related
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