Sugar maple not sweet enough

Suzanne Croft watched with an ache in her heart as workers on Tuesday removed her beloved sugar maple from the front yard of her home near Spokane’s Cannon Hill Park.

The 90-plus-year-old tree looked healthy, but two of the city’s top certified arborists diagnosed it with structural defects that made the maple a risk for sudden failure.

Croft said she agonized over the decision to cut it down. But after making up her mind, she held a memorial service for a tree that had for years radiated with a blend of red, orange, yellow and green every fall.

“I’ve been crying all morning,” Croft said as the workers’ chainsaws roared. “It’s been absolutely heartbreaking.”

Experts said Croft’s problem is one that is likely to be repeated across much of Spokane as the city’s urban forest reaches the century mark in age. Trees like the one that graced Croft’s front yard may be expected to succumb to longstanding structural defects, and the failure likely will come during a high wind or heavy load of snow and ice.

Croft said she initially hoped to save the tree when she contacted arborist Rich Baker, of Baker’s Tree Service, following an unusually large drop of seeds two seasons ago.

Baker, who stood by as a tree removal company cut the maple to pieces, said the tree apparently was damaged many years ago and regenerated itself by developing a pair of upward growing trunks instead of the proper single trunk. The condition, Baker said, is known as “co-dominant stems” and is best corrected when the tree is young. Apparently, Croft’s tree went untended after the initial damage, he said.

To the untrained eye, Croft’s maple might have appeared normal. But when the tree aged, it developed cracks or seams between the two trunks, which were never sealed together by solid wood on the inside.

“In structural terms, it’s exceedingly compromised,” Baker said.

He described the tree as “imminently hazardous” and “extremely dangerous” to Croft, her house, neighbors and passersby on the street and sidewalk in front of the home. “We’ve got a high potential to fail and a great number of targets,” he explained.

At one point, Baker said, he considered drilling the tree and fastening cables to hold the two trunks together but ruled that out after obtaining a second opinion on the tree’s health from consulting arborist Jim Flott, who previously worked as the city’s arborist.

Flott said the way to avoid such problems is to give trees professional, educated care when they are young.

“This is an unfortunate removal that didn’t have to be,” he said.

As workers sliced into the trunk, they discovered that the diagnosis was correct. It was split on the inside with pieces of bark and organic matter running from one side to the other.

“It just fell apart,” Croft said.

Croft said she wants to replace her lost tree with another sugar maple, and her husband, James Funke, hopes to make furniture out of some of the healthy wood from the old maple.

Some of the rest will be used as firewood.

“I’m pretty emotionally worn out,” she said. “It’s quite an ordeal.”