A tree is dying when it shows one or more of five observable signs: dead branches in the upper crown while the lower tree still leafs out, bark falling away in plates or sheets to expose dry wood, mushrooms or shelf-like conks growing at the base, fine boring dust or resin pitch tubes on the trunk, and cracked or heaving soil at the root zone. The most serious of those is fungus at the base — mushrooms or conks on the lower trunk and root flare mean the structural wood that anchors the tree is already being consumed, often years before the top of the tree looks bad. One sign means watch it closely. Two or more means get eyes on it.
Trees rarely die overnight. They decline in stages and leave evidence the whole way down, which is good news: almost every dying tree in the Spokane area gives its owner a year or more of warning. Here is how to read that evidence.
Sign 1: Dieback that starts at the top
Crown dieback is the most reliable early indicator. A declining tree pulls resources back from its extremities first, so bare branch tips and dead limbs appear in the upper crown and outer edges while the trunk and lower branches still look fine. Compare the tree against a photo from two or three summers ago if you have one. A canopy that lets noticeably more sunlight through than it used to, or leaves and needles that come in smaller and paler each season, is telling you the tree can no longer supply what it once did.
A few dead twigs are normal — that is just self-pruning of shaded interior wood. The pattern is what matters: dead wood concentrated at the top and spreading downward year over year is decline, and once a tree has lost more than roughly half its living crown, recovery is uncommon.
Sign 2: Bark falling off in plates or sheets
Healthy bark is tight and continuous. When large plates lift and drop off, exposing smooth, dry wood beneath, the cambium under that bark has already died. Run a hand over the exposed wood — if it is soft, punky, or crumbles under a thumbnail, decay is underway inside the trunk. Some species shed naturally, including birch and ponderosa pine, so check what is underneath: normal shedding reveals fresh living bark in a different color, while decline reveals bare dead wood, usually concentrated in one large area rather than spread evenly around the trunk.
Sign 3: Mushrooms or conks at the base
Treat this one as the red flag on the list. Mushrooms, brackets, or shelf-like conks growing from the lower trunk, root flare, or surface roots are fruiting bodies — the visible reproductive structure of a fungus that has been eating the wood inside for years. That wood is the tree's anchorage and its structural column.
This is why a fungus-affected tree can look full and green on top and still be hollow at the base; crown appearance simply does not report what the root plate is doing. Base fungus on a tree standing over a house, driveway, or sidewalk deserves a hands-on assessment quickly, and a large share of those trees end up as candidates for tree removal rather than treatment.
Sign 4: Pitch tubes, boring dust, and woodpecker work
Wood-boring insects are opportunists — they overwhelmingly attack trees that are already stressed. On conifers, the tell is a pitch tube: a popcorn-sized blob of dried resin on the trunk where the tree tried to flush a beetle back out of its entry hole. Reddish-brown pitch tubes generally mean the beetle won; creamy white ones mean the tree pushed back. Look also for fine, rust-colored boring dust collecting in bark crevices, in spiderwebs on the trunk, and in the duff at the base.
A sudden burst of woodpecker activity on one tree says the same thing from another direction. The birds are after larvae under the bark, and the flaked-off patches they leave behind are a strong indicator of an active infestation.
Sign 5: Changes at the root zone
The last place homeowners look is the place trees actually fail. Walk the base and look for soil that is cracked, mounded, or lifted on one side, roots that circle the trunk instead of flaring away from it, a trunk that enters the ground like a telephone pole with no visible flare, and any new lean. Trenching, driveway work, or grade changes inside the drip line in the past few years count as evidence too — root damage typically shows up in the crown one to three growing seasons later.
New lean plus disturbed soil is the one combination here that is urgent rather than diagnostic. It means the root plate is moving. Keep people and vehicles out from under the tree and get it looked at the same week.
Signs a pine tree is dying: the Spokane beetle chapter
Spokane's dying-tree conversation right now is largely a pine conversation. Hot, dry summers have left ponderosas across the region drought-stressed and short on the resin they need to defend themselves, and native pine bark beetles have taken the opening. Spokane Parks has been working through the removal of more than 200 beetle-killed ponderosas on city property — roughly 50 of them at Manito Park alone — and the city has issued homeowner advisories about pine beetle damage on private property.
The progression on a pine is specific and worth memorizing. Over a period of months the crown fades from green to dull yellow-green, then to rust red, usually starting at the top or on one side. Pitch tubes and reddish boring dust appear on the trunk. Woodpeckers strip patches of bark. By the time the entire crown is red, the tree is dead and the beetles inside are maturing toward their next flight.
That last detail drives the timing. Beetles emerge from a killed tree in spring and early summer and fly to neighboring pines, so a beetle-killed pine left standing through spring becomes a launch pad aimed at the rest of your yard. Removing and properly handling infested wood during the dormant window — realistically December through February here — is the difference between losing one tree and losing three. Deep summer watering is the other half of the equation: a ponderosa with enough soil moisture to produce resin can pitch out a small attack on its own.
Dying, dormant, or just stressed?
Not every bare tree in March is a dead tree, and Spokane's long cold season makes this the most common misdiagnosis. Deciduous trees here leaf out from mid-April into May, so condemning a maple or ash in March is jumping the gun. Use the scratch test instead: nick a twig with a thumbnail or knife. Green and moist under the bark means living tissue; brown, dry, and brittle means that section is dead. Test several branches at different heights and on different sides, because trees die in sections. Conifers get no such benefit of the doubt — pines and firs hold their needles year-round, so a thinning, yellowing, or red-crowned conifer in winter is not resting.
Between healthy and hopeless sits a large middle category: stressed but savable. A tree with a mostly full crown, green twigs, tight bark, and no base fungus usually responds to basic care — deep, slow watering during dry stretches (a common extension-service rule of thumb is roughly 10 gallons per inch of trunk diameter), a two-to-four-inch mulch ring extending toward the drip line and kept off the trunk itself, no fertilizer until the cause is understood, and selective tree trimming that takes out dead and broken wood without stripping live foliage. Topping a stressed tree does the opposite of helping: it removes the food factory the tree needs to recover.
When a dying tree becomes a removal decision
The decision is less about the tree's health than about what stands underneath it, and Spokane's conditions raise the stakes in two specific ways.
First, anchorage. Much of the city sits on thin glacial-outwash and rocky soil over Columbia River basalt, especially on the South Hill and the scabland fringes. Big conifers there develop wide, shallow root plates rather than deep ones, so decay in the root zone removes a larger share of the tree's total holding power.
Second, wind. The November 17, 2015 windstorm brought 71-mph gusts and toppled roughly 1,900 trees inside Spokane city limits alone, causing the largest outage in Avista's history at about 180,000 homes, along with two deaths. Ice Storm '96 damaged around 5,000 of the city's 70,000 street and park trees beyond saving. Storms like those do not test healthy and declining trees equally — they find the compromised ones.
Practical thresholds for calling in an assessment: a dead or mostly dead crown, base fungus on a tree near a structure, a new lean or heaving soil, a beetle-killed pine of any size, and significant decay on a tree upwind of something you care about. Cost climbs as a tree deteriorates, too, because dead wood is unsafe to climb and often forces crane or bucket work that the same tree would not have needed alive.
What to do next
Walk your yard this month with these five signs in mind, and pay particular attention to your pines — the fading crowns and pitch tubes showing up around Spokane neighborhoods are the leading edge of a beetle cycle that runs on a spring calendar. A tree showing one sign goes on your watch list. A tree showing two or more, or any beetle-killed pine near a structure, is worth having assessed before the dormant-season removal window closes.
If something in your yard has looked off since last summer, a free on-site estimate will tell you which category it falls into — savable, watch it, or take it down. Call (509) 215-2692 or request a free estimate for a straight answer about what the tree is doing and what it would take to make the property safe.