What causes my tree is hollow inside?
Decay follows an injury, and heartwood is wood the tree has already written off. Storm-torn limbs, flush cuts and heading cuts from a bad pruning decades ago, lightning scars, and mower wounds start the column; fungi extend it up and down the stem while the tree keeps laying new wood on the outside. A hollow tree is a tree that has been walling decay off successfully for a long time — the hollow is the record of an old fight, not proof of a losing one.
What you'd see
An open cavity you can see or reach into, usually at an old branch stub, a storm wound, or the base; a stretch of trunk that thuds dully when rapped, compared against sound trunk higher up on the same tree; a squirrel or raccoon living in the stem, or ant traffic in and out of a hole; piles of sawdust-like frass below an opening; bark that sounds papery and sits over nothing behind it.
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