Inglewood, CA Expert Arborists

Inglewood’s Tree Challenges

Any older coast live oaks in the city are worth watching for polyphagous shot hole borer, which can attack healthy trees as well as mature trees that already have wounds or accumulated stress. Gold-spotted oak borer, found in parts of northern Los Angeles County, hasn’t reached Inglewood, but it’s a borer worth knowing the signs of on those same oaks. Jacaranda and London plane make up much of the remaining street canopy, and each brings its own failure point: included bark at the crotch as jacarandas age, and codominant trunks on planes that have grown tall along the wider boulevards. Scattered eucalyptus stands through older lots add borer exposure on top of a habit of dropping large limbs with little warning.

Winter storms over saturated clay are the seasonal event we watch closest, since standing water at the root flare after a wet week can undercut a tree that looked healthy all summer. Offshore Santa Ana winds test the same trees again later in the year, and a canopy already carrying borer damage has far less structural reserve to survive either one.