We’ve got a flowering cherry tree in our front yard - exact species unknown. It’s quite dead: it flowered and grew leaves but about a week ago noticed the leaves looked a bit wilted. As of yesterday it was clear the only flowers it would produce in the future would be daisies (as in, pushing up…).
It’s a smaller tree and growing at a substantial angle, so if we could borrow a chainsaw it would actually be very safe for us to cut down (just stand on the uphill side).
Is it worth saving the trunk and larger branches to season for firewood? I’ve heard true cherrywood is good, but this is a flowering variety.
Not 100% sure what killed it but we think it’s lingering damage from a trench that was dug last fall a couple feet to one side of it. I’m just surprised it did so well until the past week or so. Would the damage cause the wood to be less suitable for firewood?
Unless the wood is obviously crumbly rotten it will be excellent for firewood. Any rot will probably stop, or slow way down as the wood dries. Cut it up and split any pieces before it dries and assumes a rock like consistence. Be careful with the chainsaw near the ground, cherry trees are often multiple trunks that pick up and carry rocks from the ground. They won’t go up very high, but they can wreck the chain.
Sorry to hear about your cherry tree. We’ve lost several apple trees on our property (mostly crabapple but one tree that I really miss that produced a lot of eating apples). It almost feels like a lost member of the family.
Anyway, yeah, it should be fine for firewood. Better yet, if you do any BBQing/smoking, cherry is great wood for that. One small upside of our losing several apple trees is that I have probably a lifetime of applewood for smoking chicken and pork.
Not sure what you mean asking whether damage from the trench would preclude use as firewood, but I don’t see how that would make a difference.
I guess what I was thinking was that the nature of the damage would have led to the wood beginning to rot faster or something :D.
We have literally used our fireplace once since moving in here 14 years ago, so I’m not sure WE want the firewood, but I did offer it up to the other neighbors on the street. Win-win situation: we save a bit on having the old one hauled away, they get free firewood. Maybe I’ll save some smaller branches for us for use on the grill (if we ever get that working again).
Tripolar: you mean the rocks might be embedded inside the trunk or something? It’s a single-trunk tree, so I don’t see rocks getting caught in any multi-trunk scenarios.
Sorry, but are you quite sure it’s dead? It seems unlikely if it was still producing leaves and flowers this year.
If you are interested at all in keeping it (you don’t have to be, but as I do volunteer work with trees I hate to see one bite the dust unnecessarily) you can test by scraping lightly along some of the outer branches to see if there is any green immediately under the brown outer layer.
If the trenching damaged some of the roots on one side, it may have traumatized the tree to some extent, but the tree as a whole should survive, there are a LOT of roots down there. If you are worried about disease having gotten into the tree from broken roots, I’m not sure what to suggest now - at the time, I would have gone through before the trench was filled in and checked to make sure any chewed up roots were cut cleanly so as to heal faster. Anyway, if you were in my area I would volunteer to come by and see what I could see about whether the tree would survive or not.
All this is assuming you haven’t actually cut it down yet. And if you do cut it down, I hope you will plant another tree of some kind somewhere. Yes, I am a tree-hugger.
eta: if you do find a few small dead branches but most of them still show green, trim off the dead wood so the tree doesn’t waste energy trying to revive it.
Cherry makes great firewood. But, if you know anyone who does cabinetry, or fine woodworking, they’d love to have a few pieces. Ask around. Cherrywood objets are usually quite lovely. You could barter some wood for a finished piece or two.
Cherry trees, at least the variety belonging to our condo association, don’t live all that long. 20 - 25 years, IIRC. Yours may have simply been at the end of its lifespan.
I’ll check this, but we have a sprinkler system (in fact, that too had been damaged by the trench and had to be repaired when they did the spring turn-on.
The tree may well have been at the end of its life - it’s 20+ years old (house was built 20 years ago, the tree was put in by the builder, and it was probably a few years old at the time), but the suddenness is what is so surprising.
Leave it there as a nesting site for birds. More nestlings are hatched in dead tree holes, than in nests built out in the open. Automatically clearing dead timber seriously impacts the bird populations, and reduces the available food supply for those that control insect populations.
I’m with Roderick. I doubt it could have joined the choir invisble that quickly.
I’ve got all kinds of trees, that bloom and flower, drop leaves and appear dead at different times of the season, but they always come back next spring. I’ve got one that has already done its thing, and another that is just starting to bud!
Give it a chance. If it flowered this spring, I’ll bet its not dead yet.
If you consider it a valuable tree, get an opinion from a trained arborist before having it chainsawed (“landscaper” does not necessarily equate to “knows jack shit about trees”).