What Counts As A Protected Tree And Where The Line Sits

Size, in most of this market, measured at a specified height on the trunk. Garland, Allen, McKinney and Wylie all start at six inches, Dallas at eight, and Plano and Frisco work from their own articles. Species enters the picture in Garland and Dallas, though it does different jobs in each. In Richardson nothing on private commercial property is protected in this sense at all.

No, and confusing them changes the number on the same tree. DBH is measured four and a half feet above natural ground level. Caliper is a nursery measurement taken lower on the trunk, where the stem is wider. A tree can therefore sit above a caliper threshold and below a DBH one, which is why the ordinance's own wording decides which figure applies rather than habit.

In Dallas it does directly, through a list of species that aren't protected at all: Callery pear, chinaberry, Chinese tallow, Ilex species other than yaupon and possumhaw holly, all palms, tree-of-heaven and other listed invasives. In Garland it works the other way. Size alone decides protection, and species decides what replacement costs once a tree is protected.

Wylie is the most explicit about it. A protected tree there's at least twelve feet tall and either a single trunk of six inches caliper at four and a half feet, or a multi-trunk tree totaling eight inches, computed as the largest stem plus half of each additional stem. That formula can protect a tree that no single stem would have qualified on its own.

A tier above protected, with stronger rules attached. McKinney runs three, all at DBH: a Quality Tree at six inches, a second threshold at twenty-seven, and a Specimen Tree at forty-two inches, which may not be critically altered at all without the Director of Planning's approval. Dallas uses a Significant Tree category instead, which its footprint waiver never reaches.

Post oaks at twelve inches and above, and at twenty-four inches and above American elm, bois d'arc, cedar elm, chittamwood, common persimmon, eastern red cedar, green ash, all other oaks, pecan, all walnuts and white ash. The category matters commercially because Dallas's development impact area waiver is never available for a significant tree, whatever else it covers.

It can, and hackberry is the example worth knowing. In Garland it's Class 3 and mitigates at half an inch per inch once it reaches six inches. In Frisco it isn't protected at all and mitigates at zero. And in Plano's 2014 i-Tree assessment it was the single most common tree in the canopy at 15.5%, so this isn't an obscure edge case here.

In Dallas, yes. A tree planted as a replacement is a protected tree in its own right, which means removing it later starts the process again rather than tidying up a previous obligation. It's the clearest illustration that mitigation planting creates a standing asset on the site rather than discharging a debt.