Is my tree dead?

Hi, hope you can help.

When we moved in to our house 4 yrs ago there were two large conifers in the back garden. Two summers ago we had them cut down and found what the tree surgeon thought was a pear tree hidden behind / in between them. It didn't look very happy having been smothered by the conifers for goodness knows how long. Last year it threw out a few stunted leaves on one side, this year it shows no sign of any life, twiggy bits snap off and there's no buds or leaves. However, there are shoots of somethintg growing from the base, they seem to be part of the tree but might not be.

So, is there an easy way to tell if a tree is alive or dead? And, assuming it's alive (and I really want it to be), is there anything I can do to nuture any spark of life?

Thank you

 

If the top growth was completely deprived of sunlight for any length of time, there's a good chance the top growth could have died. However, trees are amazing things. I've witnessed first hand how trees can defeat the odds.

One technique that many deciduous trees have is to kind of lay dormant in times of stress, keeping the roots alive and sacrificing the top growth. The new shoots coming out of the ground could well be the tree having another go from the roots. The practice of coppicing depends on a tree's ability to do this. However there is a downside. If it is a pear tree, then the chances are it was a graft, with a culinary pear grafted onto another root stock. The root stock is, I believe, usually bred from something close to the wild version of the tree, so any shoots coming from below the graft will not produce the large sweet sweet pairs that we all know, but something closer to the pear equivalent of a crab apple.

 

This is quite correct, don't give up on any tree until the second year.