Bark Falling Off Your Tree in Vaughan?

Normal Shedding or a Dying Tree?

Bark is a living layer. Just under the rough outside sits a thin band of tissue that carries sugar down from the leaves and grows new wood each year. When that layer dies, the bark above it loosens and falls away. When it is alive and growing, some species push off old outer bark in flakes or strips as they get wider.

Start with the simplest test. Pick a twig near the bare patch and scrape it with your thumbnail. Green or creamy, moist tissue means that part of the tree is alive. Brown, dry tissue means it is dead. Our guide on how to tell if a tree is dead walks through the other checks.

Common Causes

Bark comes off for six common reasons, and only some of them mean trouble.

Normal peeling

Silver maples develop shaggy plates as they age. White and paper birch peel in thin papery strips. Sycamore and London plane shed patches to show cream and green bark below. Shagbark hickory has bark that curls off in long strips by design. If the exposed surface underneath is fresh bark, not bare wood, the tree is doing what it should.

Emerald ash borer

On an ash tree, falling bark is a serious sign. The beetle larvae feed under the bark and cut off the tree’s supply lines. Look for D-shaped exit holes, vertical splits in the bark, S-shaped tunnels where bark has come away, and “blonding”, the light patches left when woodpeckers chip off bark to reach the larvae. A thin, bare-topped crown usually goes with it.

Dead branches or a dead trunk

Once a branch or a whole tree dies, the bark dries out, shrinks and falls off in sheets over a season or two. The wood underneath turns grey and smooth.

Sunscald and frost cracks

Thin-barked young trees can crack on the south or southwest side in winter, when sun warms the trunk by day and it freezes again at night. The bark along the crack can lift and fall away.

Mower and trimmer damage

Repeated knocks from a lawn mower or string trimmer at the base peel bark off in a ring. A tree with bark missing all the way around the trunk is girdled and will decline.

Cankers and fungus

Fungal cankers kill patches of bark, leaving sunken areas that crack and fall away. Mushrooms or shelf-like conks near the bare spot point to rot inside.

How Bad Is It?

• Thin flakes off a healthy tree with fresh bark below: normal. Nothing to do.
• A small wound on one side, live tissue around it: the tree can usually close it over time.
• Bare wood on a large part of the trunk: the tree has lost that section for good.
• Bark missing in a ring around the trunk: the tree above it will die.
• An ash with blonding, splits and a thin crown: likely emerald ash borer. Dead ash gets brittle within a couple of years.

What to Do Now

• Do the scratch test on twigs from a few different branches.
• Take photos of the bare patch, the trunk base and the crown in leaf.
• Keep the mower and trimmer back from the trunk. A ring of mulch, a few centimetres deep and not piled against the bark, protects it.
• If dead limbs hang over a driveway, patio or roof, keep people and cars out from under them.

Do not paint or seal the bare wood, and do not staple loose bark back on. Neither helps. If the tree is an ash you hope to save, treatment is a licensed applicator’s job, and it only works on trees that are still mostly healthy.

Bark Problems in Vaughan

Ash was planted widely along newer streets in Maple, Vellore Village and Patterson, and emerald ash borer has killed most of the untreated ones. Those trees are where we see bark falling off in large sheets. Older Woodbridge and Thornhill yards have silver maples whose shaggy bark is normal, and birches that peel as they should but suffer in hot, dry summers. Young boulevard and front-yard trees on new subdivisions are the ones that pick up mower damage and frost cracks.

A dead private tree 20 cm or wider still needs a City permit, but the dead or hazardous tree permit has no fee and no replacement requirement. Boulevard trees belong to the City; call Vaughan Public Works at 905-832-8585.

When to Call Us

Not sure which kind you have? Look at the tree again in late spring, once every healthy branch should be in full leaf. Bare limbs above a patch of missing bark confirm the damage, and they are the limbs that drop first.

If the scratch test comes up brown, the bare area is large, or the tree is an ash with woodpecker damage, reach us between 8am and 8pm, any day. We come out the same day, tell you whether the tree is dying or just shedding, and price it on the spot if it needs to come down. Here is how we handle dead trees before they start dropping limbs.