The things people ask before they take the photo — and the ones they ask after.
Usually roots, water, or both — and usually slower than it looks. Scratch a thin twig: green under the bark means it is still alive.
Brown edges on otherwise green leaves is drought or heat. Spots that spread, or leaves dropping while still green, is more likely fungal or insect.
Most leaf spots are fungal, cosmetic, and outgrown by next season. The ones worth acting on keep spreading into new growth or arrive alongside dieback at the branch tips.
Early leaf drop is a stress response, not a disease by itself. If it starts at the top or on one side, look at the trunk and the roots before the leaves.
Scratch a pencil-thick twig with a thumbnail. Green and damp underneath is alive; brown and dry the whole way round, on several twigs, is not.
Leaf spots, cankers, rusts and most insect damage, yes. Roots are behind a lot of decline and a photo cannot see them, so the answer says which part it is sure about.
Three photos beat one: the whole tree, the bark up close, and a branch. Leaf shape alone is ambiguous; leaf plus bark plus branching usually is not.
Start with how they attach to the twig — in opposite pairs, or alternating — because that one detail rules out most of the list. Shape, edge and veining come after.
Sometimes. Shagbark hickory is unmistakable; most young bark is not. Send it anyway — the answer tells you how sure it is.
Genus nearly always, species most of the time. Cultivars and hybrids are the hard cases, and it says so instead of guessing.
Measure around the trunk at 4½ feet up, divide by π for the diameter, and run that through growth curves for the species. No coring, no counting rings.
Run a tape around the trunk at 4½ feet above the ground and divide by 3.14. Measure at the base instead and the root flare inflates every number that follows.
Depends on the species and on where it stands. The same red oak puts on twice the trunk in Georgia that it does in Minnesota — which is why this asks where the tree is first.
The estimate projects trunk, height and spread out to 20 years for your species and climate region. Read it as a range drawn from measured street trees, not a promise.
Most multiply diameter by a single growth factor for the species and stop there. This runs the USDA Urban Tree Database — measured street and park trees, the data behind i‑Tree.
Roughly one tree in four falls outside the tables, and the tab says so rather than estimating anyway. Ask Alex instead — a conversation can work from a species the tables cannot.
Yes, and there is no sign-up. Diagnosis, identification, age estimates and three follow-up questions all cost nothing.
Age estimates need it, because growth curves are calibrated per climate region and a region-less estimate is a confident number about a different tree. Naming a state is enough; you never have to share GPS.
They go to an AI model for the read and stay with the case so it can be reopened later. What is kept and for how long is in the privacy policy.
Add it to your home screen from the browser’s share menu and it opens like an app. There is nothing to install and no account to make.
No. It is a first read — enough to tell a cosmetic problem from a reason to call someone, and it says plainly which one you have.