BigCopper

Thanks all. Guess we're going to have to accept the inevitable sooner rather than later. Can we reuse any of the wood or must it all be destroyed? I seem to recall reading somewhere that you could mill the wood clear of the infection? Someone has suggested creating a bench from some of the wood. And the leaves have gone into the estate compost heap, do we need to burn the lot?

Thanks for that, guess that would be expensive. I assume the amount of fruiting bodies doesn't indicate anything useful.

Hi All, I live on Grade 2 listed parkland with a large and ancient copper beech on the lawn outside. Our local council just informed us it has kretzschmaria deusta with a safe life of less than 10 years. The park management company has decided it should be felled immediately, while I feel it might survive for several years if we reduced it's impressive width and height to removed the risk of windthrow. Is there anyway of testing how bad the internal decay has got? Looking at some of the images for fruiting bodies on this site, ours does not seem to have progressed very far yet but I'm just an inquisitive layman We have got some dead branches higher up but we had put that down to age. As far as I know, no k-deusta was noticed when branches were removed a few years ago. The tree is 17m tall with a crown width of 22m and estimated to be 175 years old. The site has been very damp in the last year and concern has been expressed that this increases the risk of windthrow and/or that the roots are not doing a good job (if that's a thing!?) It stands alone on a lawn and the site is subject to considerable winds at times. Any advice gratefully received.