Sweet Chestnut tree - slight root damage. Likely to be a problem?

A friend of mine is currently using his mini digger to clear a lot of bramble roots out of one neglected area in my garden, that area also has a healthy looking sweet chestnut tree (it's about 25 years old, the trunk is a bit over a foot in diameter and it's forked about a 6 inches from the ground).

While digging near the tree two moderately thick roots that were only three or four inches inches below the surface of the soil were accidentally broken, both roots were about one and a half inches in diameter.

I know that sweet chestnut has a large root system and a deep tap root but are these broken roots likely to cause the tree a problem, maybe temporarily? I guess not but just curious. It's a nice tree and I'd be gutted if it suffered as a result of this.

 

The thick roots mostly provide stability for the tree.
The fine hair-like roots that grow from the bigger roots do all the work of supplying water and food for the tree, and as it's a reasonably mature tree now there will be more than enough of them - and there's unlikely to be a lack of water at the roots this year!

So your tree may be more vulnerable in high winds atm, but I don't think it would cause any other problems.

 

Thanks, hopefully as only two roots were affected it won't lose any stability. The broken roots just happened to be on the south side though and the winds in my fairly exposed spot mainly come from the south west. Time will tell I guess if all is okay.

Do trees in general grow other roots to compensate if these kind of thicker surface roots are broken?

 

As you know it does have a very deep taproot system and that will do most of the work to keep the tree stable. New roots will replace the damaged ones in time, so hopefully all will be well.

 

Thanks, I'll keep everything crossed. :-)