Should I remove or save my tulip poplar?
Tulip Poplar isn't a habitual problem species, so a sound one is usually worth an opinion before it comes out. Indiana's state tree and usually the tallest thing standing on a central-Indiana lot, which is exactly why it ends up on a quote. It holds its lowest limbs high and carries most of its weight above 50 ft, so a tree 60 ft from the house still reaches the roof and nothing on it can be worked from the ground.
How to tell which one you've got
Yellow leaves shedding from the interior of the canopy in late July and August is a drought reflex Purdue documents nearly every year — the tree refoliates normally the following spring and does not need to come down. Real decline reads differently: thinning that starts at the very top and works downward, twigs at the crown edge that never releaf, and a sticky honeydew film from tuliptree scale or aphids coating the deck and cars below with black sooty mold.
The structural question
Rated intermediate for ice-storm susceptibility, so it is not the first species on the ground after a quarter-inch event — but when it does fail, it fails large, because a limb breaking 70 ft up is several hundred pounds with a long drop. In central Indiana the bigger wind risk is whole-tree lean or uprooting, since a shallow root plate in saturated clay after several days of rain has very little left to hold.
Related
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