Question: We acquired some property in August. It had been vacant for 10 months or longer, and this young live oak is struggling. It’s sparse, and I see the crack on the south side of its trunk. Can it be saved? K.S., Farmersville.

This is also sunscald, as with the maple above. It’s always a good plan, when planting a new oak, to protect its trunk with paper tree wrap from the nursery. That’s usually not as essential with live oaks as it is with Shumard red oaks and Chinese pistachios, but it certainly would have helped in this case. I would suggest cleaning the wound up with paint thinner and a rag, then wrapping the trunk. Unwrap it every couple of months to check on its progress in healing. You may be wondering what to do with the sprout on the right of the trunk. If this were my tree, I would wrap around it and leave it in place for a few months. If it appears that the top growth might be dying because of all this damage, this new sprout might need to become your new trunk. You might have to cut the top back to a point just above that shoot in a year or two, or the top might recover completely, at which time you could simply clip off this shoot. And finally, completely as a side note, I am trying to figure out some angles from your photograph. It looks like the tree leans to the right. It looks like the horizon (the ground) slopes way to the left. Is the tree that far out of plumb? That’s a different issue that would, if true, cause concern for the tree.