Carpenter Ants in my ornamental cherry tree

[Dazed_Lily]

Here are photos of Carpenter Ant activity in the trunk of my precious ornamental cherry tree. It had a pre-existing gash in it(before I owned the house). The carpenter ants seem to have gravitated towards it and just about everythning else in my yard.
Should I be doing anything or is the tree safe ?

[Tom]

The damage to your tree looks pretty bad, and it may ultimately kill it. But it is highly unlikely that the damage was done by carpenter ants. They may now be taking advantage of the opening, and building in the decaying wood along with several other insects and/or diseases.

A tree will not recover from loss of internal structure. Growth and/or healing only occurs on the outer layers. You can however, treat the area with something like Liquid Seven to keep ants and other insects out and perhaps delay the internal decay.

Here is an article that may help you with the problem:
http://www.extension.umn.edu/distribution/housingandclothing/DK1015.html

[sue salley]

Tom, After Cathy gets rid of the ants. isn't there some type of "tar" that she can paint on the tree to prolong its life? It looks like the damage is already to the heartwood so I don't know if this would do any good or not.

[Tom]

Sue,
I have an oak tree on my property that is about 4' in diameter at the base. There is an opening at the base, and the thing is completely hollow. The cavity is quite large, yet the tree looks to be sound. As the tree grows, new wood is added to the outside and more old wood deteriorates on the inside. New growth on the edges of the opening also makes the opening smaller each year, but the tree trunk is just a shell.

These trees will be hollow, structurally weak and more apt to break for the rest of their lives. But, because all growth takes place on the outer layer, they will continue to look healthy (except for the ugly scars on the trunk). If someone could actually come up with an inexpensive method to fill those voids with something that would return strength to the stem, and that the outer portion of the tree could grow over, they would become wealthy.

[sue salley]

Well Tom at least it gives it character. There was a very old quince tree at the farm that had a hole in it that you could actually see through the tree. But it bloomed and was full of quine. Made pretty good jelly. I don't know if it still there or not.