Saw a maple in downtown Portland with a gutter downspout aimed right at its base

Was down in Portland last Tuesday doing a job and walked past this big mature maple on a side street. Someone had a gutter downspout dumping water straight onto the trunk root flare area. That tree is gonna rot out in maybe 5 years if nobody redirects that water. I grabbed a couple of extension pieces from my truck and rigged a temporary fix. Has anyone else seen stuff like this around town and actually tried to fix it on the spot?

2 comments

2 Comments

the_anna1mo ago

My neighbor down the street had a similar thing happen with her old oak tree. Landscapers put a new drainage pipe right next to the trunk after they regraded her yard. She didn't think anything of it until the bark started peeling off and mushrooms grew at the base about two years later. An arborist told her the constant moisture was rotting the roots from the inside out. She had to spend over a thousand dollars to have the whole tree removed because it became a safety hazard. Sometimes people just don't realize how much damage something simple like water runoff can do to a mature tree.

parker_bailey1mo ago

Did you see that article about how roots spread way wider than the tree does @the_anna?