A homeowner in Portland showed me a weird root flare issue on her maple

I was doing a routine inspection last month and she pointed out how the soil was mounded up around the base, almost like a volcano. She said, 'My last arborist told me this was fine, but it just looks wrong.' We gently excavated it and found the root flare was buried a good 8 inches deep. Has anyone else run into a 'mulch volcano' that deep on a mature tree?

4 comments

4 Comments

fionamurphy8d ago

My old boss taught us to mound mulch for moisture. Then I saw a whole row of stressed oaks with buried flares. Now I dig down to find that first major root every single time.

drews558d ago

So your old boss was basically suffocating trees, @fionamurphy?

the_mary8d ago

But is it really that big of a deal? Trees in nature get covered with leaves and stuff all the time. Maybe they're just tougher than we give them credit for.

shane_morgan8d ago

How do you even start fixing that? I had a client with the same problem and we just kept digging until we found solid flare, like @fionamurphy said. It took a while but the tree looked way better after we cleared all that soil away.