Tree Removal in Corpus Christi, TX

Tree removal in Corpus Christi is shaped by the Gulf. The city sits about six and a half feet above sea level on the Coastal Bend, it has one of the windiest climates of any coastal city in North America, and every summer brings the chance of a hurricane. Trees here live with salt spray, long dry spells and steady wind off the bay. Some species handle that remarkably well. Others decline quietly for years and then fail in the first strong storm. Most of the calls we get come down to one of three things: a palm that is dying, a tree that was damaged in a storm, or a tree that has simply grown too close to the house, the pool or the power lines.

Palms and lethal bronzing

Palms are part of almost every Corpus Christi street, and they bring a problem most of the country never sees. Lethal bronzing, a phytoplasma disease spread by a small sap-feeding insect called the American palm cixiid, has been killing palms in the area since many Corpus Christi palms began declining in 2001. The Texas Department of Agriculture lists it in Nueces County along with Cameron, Hidalgo, Willacy and parts of Kleberg County. Canary Island date palms are hit most often in Texas, and queen palms and cabbage palmettos are affected too. The telltale sign on a date palm is the central spear leaf dying, and an infected palm usually dies within about a year. TDA's guidance is that palms that test positive should be removed and destroyed, and confirmed cases reported to the department. That makes dead and dying palm removal a large share of the work on this coast.

Hurricanes and wind

The city's tree history is a storm history. Hurricane Celia came ashore in August 1970 as a Category 4 storm, and the Corpus Christi Weather Bureau office recorded gusts of 161 mph. About a third of the city's houses were badly damaged or destroyed. In 2017 Hurricane Harvey made landfall as a Category 4 just up the coast near Rockport, with an extreme wind warning that covered Nueces and San Patricio counties. Hurricane Hanna affected the city again in 2020. After storms like these, the trees that cause the most trouble are not always the biggest. They are the ones with a weak fork, old decay at the base, a heavy limb reaching over the roof or a top full of dead palm fronds.

Live oaks, mesquite and the trees that hold on

Southern live oak is native along the Texas coast and is extremely resistant to strong sustained winds, thanks to a deep taproot, a wide root system and a low center of gravity. A healthy live oak usually rides out a storm better than the house it shades. We are much more likely to recommend careful pruning for a live oak than removal. Mesquite is a different story: it has paired thorns, deep taproots and buds below ground, so a mesquite that is only cut down tends to come back as a cluster of new trunks. Removing one for good means dealing with the stump as well as the tree.

Ground, water and drought

There is no solid rock at the surface under Corpus Christi. The city sits on river-deposited sand, silt and clay, with layers locally cemented into caliche. Combined with long dry periods and the city's ongoing water supply worries, that means many trees are stressed before a storm ever reaches them. Drought-weakened trees drop limbs, attract borers and lose roots, and those are often the trees that end up on a quote.

Lot by lot

The city has a mix of older neighborhoods near downtown and Ocean Drive, large suburban subdivisions on the Southside, and island and bayfront homes on Padre Island and in Flour Bluff where salt and wind are constant. Owner-occupied homes make up about 58 percent of the city's housing, according to the Census Bureau, and many of those yards have one or two big trees planted when the house was new. Access to the backyard, a pool, a fence and the power line easement usually decide how a tree comes down more than its height does.

Corpus Christi is the center of our area, including the Southside, Flour Bluff, Calallen, the neighborhoods off Ocean Drive and the homes on North Padre Island. From there we work around the bays: Portland, Gregory and the San Patricio County towns to the north across the bridge; Ingleside, Aransas Pass and Port Aransas toward the barrier islands; Robstown and the farm towns to the west; and south toward Kingsville. The whole area shares the same hurricane exposure, salt air and palm disease. What changes is the ground and the setting: sandy island lots, older shaded streets in town, and open country lots where mesquite and brush take over. Each area page covers what we found about that place.