A bare tree in the off-season and a dead tree can look identical — which is why homeowners either remove trees that were merely sleeping or keep trees that were quietly finished. A few simple checks separate dormant from dying, and dying from done.
Start with the classic: scrape a small patch of bark on a twig or small limb with a thumbnail or knife. Underneath, living tissue is green and moist; dead tissue is brown and dry. Test several spots — a tree can have dead limbs within a living canopy, which is a trimming job, not a removal.
Living twigs flex; dead twigs snap. Bend a few pencil-sized twigs from different parts of the canopy. Supple wood that bends without breaking is alive. Dry, brittle wood that snaps clean with a crack is dead — and a canopy full of it tells you the tree is failing or gone.
In season, the pattern matters more than the presence. A tree that leafs out thinly, late, or only on some limbs is declining — alive, but losing ground. A tree that produces nothing while its neighbors are in full leaf has given you its answer. Top-down dieback, where the crown thins first, points at root or vascular failure and deserves a professional read.
Fungal shelves or mushrooms growing from the trunk or roots, bark falling away in sheets, and wood that sounds hollow when tapped all speak to internal decay. A tree can be technically alive and structurally finished — standing, even leafing, on a trunk that can't be trusted. That's the scenario where 'it's still alive' and 'it needs to come down' are both true.
