Help

[Carolina]

Hi I'm wondering if anyone can please help me. I cannot get any help locally. It appears our palm might be infested. Does anyone have any suggestions or recommendations on how to treat/save it or should it be removed?

[Johnny Palmseed]

Wow that looks severely damaged. I don’t think the prognosis is good. Have you noticed the damage for a while or did it appear rapidly? Have you tried poking around or spraying water in the cavity to see if anything comes out? If I were viewing it from a distance I would guess a lightning strike but it does look like tunneling from the pics.

[Fishinsteeg234]

Kinda looks like termites 

[Carolina]

Thank you both so much.  It started out as a little spot then progressed fairly quickly. This has been very helpful to give me some direction. Thank you so much

[Merlyn]

I'm thinking termites too, they are known to get into palm trees from below ground and create similar galleries and damage.  It's a good idea to treat the palm with a systemic termiticide *before* removing it, so you've killed off the colony.  Otherwise you risk accidentally spreading the termite colony to your house or nearby trees during removal.  With that much damage I really think the only safe option is removal.  It's got a pretty heavy canopy on it and might not have much supporting the weight.

[Carolina]

21 minutes ago, Merlyn said:

I'm thinking termites too, they are known to get into palm trees from below ground and create similar galleries and damage.  It's a good idea to treat the palm with a systemic termiticide *before* removing it, so you've killed off the colony.  Otherwise you risk accidentally spreading the termite colony to your house or nearby trees during removal.  With that much damage I really think the only safe option is removal.  It's got a pretty heavy canopy on it and might not have much supporting the weight.

Thank you so much for your time! I hate to lose the tree but I think you're right. Thank you for the advice; I appreciate you