When should an ash (green and white ash) be pruned?
The only ash worth pruning today is one already enrolled in EAB treatment; a healthy ash takes structural pruning well because of its opposite, upright branching. The trap is pruning a declining ash to tidy it up — Purdue's threshold is that past roughly 50% canopy loss no treatment will recover the tree, so removing more live canopy speeds the decline and spends money on something you will remove anyway.
Reading ash (green and white ash) before you cut
EAB decline runs top-down: thinning starts in the upper third of the canopy, then epicormic sprouts erupt from the trunk and lower limbs as the tree tries to re-leaf below the damaged tissue. The tell that separates ordinary stress from EAB is woodpecker blonding — pale, flecked patches where birds stripped outer bark chasing larvae — plus 1/8-inch D-shaped exit holes and S-shaped galleries under the bark, none of which drought produces.
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