There's a big broken branch hung up in my tree — what should I do?
A branch broken but not down, caught in the limbs below it, often hanging vertically with its leaves pointing the wrong way. A pale torn face where it separated, and sometimes a long strip of bark peeled down the trunk from the break point. Leaves on that branch wilting or browning while the rest of the tree stays green. It may shift slightly in wind, or drop a few inches at a time over several days. The branch is no longer attached to anything structural — it is resting on whatever caught it, held by friction and the shape of a fork rather than by wood fiber. That is what makes this one different from everything else on this list: there is no gradual decline, no symptom to monitor, and no reliable relationship between wind and when it comes down. A hanger can sit motionless for a week and release on a still morning simply because the leaves dried out and the balance changed. The trade name for it is a widowmaker, and that is not a figure of speech.
What to do about it
Call tonight. Normally a storm damage cleanup job, $400–$4,000 around Indianapolis depending on size and access.
Can the tree be kept
The tree usually; the branch never. The hanger comes out, the break gets cut back to a proper point on the parent limb or trunk, and a healthy tree carries on without it. The answer changes where the failure tore a strip of bark and wood down the trunk on its way out, or where the limb that failed was one half of a codominant pair — that leaves a large open wound and a tree with different structure than it had, and the rest of the crown should be assessed at the same visit for the identical defect that just failed. The tree does not need the branch back; it needs a clean cut and an honest look at what else is up there.
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