Is your brown, leafless tree really dead after Hurricane Milton?

Brown, leafless trees are everywhere across Southwest Florida after Hurricane Milton. While you may be tempted to chop yours down, think twice.

“Not all of them are dead,” explained Chris Lechowicz, director of wildlife and habitat management at the Sanibel Captiva Conservation Foundation. “Some of them are going to end up dying, but a lot of them are not.”

Right now, many southwest Florida trees are in shock, battered by wind and drowning in salt. That stress causes the leaves to fall or turn brown.

On Sanibel and barrier islands like it, Lechowicz explained that storm surge was the main issue with Hurricane Milton.

“The storm surge brought salt water over the top of a lot of the ground here,” said Lechowicz. “And that salt water has absorbed into the ground, and it’s a shock to the tree.”

But over on the mainland, wind was the main problem.

 “When the hurricanes hit, they cause physical stress to the leaves that seems to be causing them to lose the leaves a little bit early,” explained Brian Bovard, FGCU Associate Professor of Ecology and Environmental Science.

While a brown tree losing its leaves may raise an alarm, Bovard explained that you have to give it time, almost like a human recovering from a cold.

“In the coming weeks and months, they may need a little trimming, and they may need maybe, in some instances, some extra watering to flush salts out if they were exposed to overwash from salt water moving on to the landscape,” explained Bovard.

In other words, these trees need a little TLC.

“A lot of our plant species, especially if you’re gardening with native plants, have the capacity to tolerate what they’ve been exposed to over the last three weeks or so,” said Bovard.

In the case of cypress trees, for example, Bovard explained Hurricane Milton sort of served as an early Fall. Cypress trees usually lose leaves in the winter, so they got a bit of a kickstart, but those leaves will grow back in just a few weeks.

Over on barrier islands like Sanibel, Lechowicz explained the situation is a bit more complicated due to high levels of salt water saturating the ground.

An issue we still haven’t gotten over from Hurricane Ian.

 “Even a year and a half later, with trees that were just hanging on, we still had a lot of them dying (after Ian),” said Lechowicz.

One way to help mitigate the high levels of salt is planting native salt-tolerant grasses. Another option is diluting the saltwater with fresh water.

“The freshwater will definitely help trees in your yard,” Lechowicz said. “But you’ve got to remember, the salt is in the ground. So even if it evaporates, that salt is there. The salt has to be washed away. And how that happens is, you know, years and years of rainfall.”

In the meantime, if you have a tree in your yard that you think might be dead, there is a simple way to tell if it might still have some life left in it.

“If you can break some of the branches, and you see that it’s all brown throughout and hard, it’s pretty much dead,” explained Lechowicz. “But if you see a little bit of green inside or it’s still got some flexibility, that’s usually a good sign that tree is going to make it.”

And if that’s the case, just have to be patient.