Novice Japanese maple owner here. I noticed my 3 year old maple has splitting bark near the root. The upper trunk is green and still appears healthy. Is this something to be concerned about? If so, any suggestions on how to mitigate the damage and save it? Photos below. Thank you!
Hi Taryeah, and welcome to the forum. As far as I can see, the splitting is happening because of a prior injury, and as the maple grows wood around it to compartmentalize -- which is how trees heal -- the new bark is splitting from the dead bark that was left from the injury. You can verify this by seeing if the bark on the "inside" of the patches with splitting around them are green (by scratching them) or if they flake off easily. The tree still looks good on top because all the right things are happening in the healing process. The only thing I'd be a little concerned about is that what looks like the dead area is still a little dark, which might show that there's still an active infection. So you could spray it with some copper treatment (like Phyton27) just in case. It's hard to say what might have caused the injury: a late spring freeze, a really cold spell in winter with bright sun, etc. But it does look like it is healing, so that's the important thing. Cheers, -Emery
