The top of my tree is dying — what should I do?
Bare gray leafless branch tips standing above an otherwise leafy crown — the classic stag-head look. Leaves smaller and paler than in previous years, or coloring up and dropping in August instead of October. Sprouts breaking out along the trunk and the large limbs low down, which is the tree trying to rebuild a crown at a height it can still supply. Fine twigs that snap brittle instead of bending. The top of a tree is the far end of the supply line and the hardest place to push water to. When a tree cannot meet demand it abandons its most expensive real estate first, dying back from the top and from the outside in. So dieback that starts high is a message about the bottom of the tree. In most cases the trouble is in the roots or in the water-conducting tissue of the stem, not in the branches you are actually looking at.
What to do about it
Within weeks. Normally a tree trimming job, $250–$1,400 around Indianapolis depending on size and access.
Can the tree be kept
It turns on how much crown is already gone and whether the cause is findable. As a working rule, below about a quarter of the crown dead, with the cause identified and corrected, a tree can rebuild. Past roughly half you are managing a decline rather than reversing one. The interventions that actually help are soil-side, not saw-side: relieve compaction, mulch the root zone out toward the drip line, water properly through dry spells, and stop whatever keeps damaging roots. Pruning removes dead wood for safety — it does not treat the cause, and heavy pruning of an already-stressed tree makes matters worse. Insist on a diagnosis before buying any treatment, because injections aimed at a vascular disease do nothing for a compacted root plate, and vice versa.
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