At dusk today about a zillion termites (I’m told they were termies, at least) swarmed out of my cypress tree—a big one planted around 1920 that stands at the edge of the road. It was quite a sight. Knocking the bark with a rock I got that hollow sound—a section of the tree’s base about the size of a couch seems to be hollow inside.

Exciting!

Who is the best person to call about this?  I assume the tree will have to come down…

—Darin

Termites are everywhere on the Coastside. Any tree with a dead section, say where a large limb was cut off, is a candidate for termites. We have a large Eucalyptus tree that has termites. We are considering cutting it down as well, but some people have said to us that if you cut down the tree, then where do you think those termites will go? The next closest habitat is likely your house. I would like to hear from somebody who really knows about this stuff.

I heard a rumor that a beautiful tree at Filbert and Hiway 1 was just removed because of termites. Quite a loss. Does anyone know about this?

If you read my post about tree removal, there is some general info about mid-coast regs on removing trees.  I also have PDF’s of the regs on heritage trees and significant trees which Barry will add a link to tomorrow.  I’d also have someone check to see if they are termites.  One of our trees had some sort of wood eating beetles that destroyed the entire inside of the tree.  At one point you could actually hear them eating the wood.  It was disgusting.  Fortunately, this particular insect only eats dead wood in trees, so once the tree was removed they were gone completely.  Probably over to Darin’s place!  Sorry about that buddy!