the general cliche is that tree roots are advantageous ... they take advantage of a situation ... like cracks in foundation.. or sewer pipes ...

as compared to 'causing' the problem ...

i highly doubt.. for what that is worth .. lol ... that it caused the crack ...

when i look at this.. my thought process is that that interior wood never 'heals' ... the bark might encapsulate it.. and hide the interior structural damage.. but the interior wood does not heal ... like a broken bone might heal ...

as such.. my thought process would continue that this tree was broken long ago .. tree time ... maybe some kid bent it down ... trees should bend in the wind.. and we know it wasnt run over.. so i blame some rug rat .. lol ... [there are no tropical type storms in MI ... so i dont have any experience with that stuff ...]

and in tree time .... it never encapsulated... repeatedly reopening any attempt to keep the bark intact ...

and of course.. as the three grows in height.. and the canopy gets larger.. the stresses grow exponentially .... its never going to heal.. and it will become a structural threat.. and ergo .. it has to go ... for safety reasons ...

that said... it has a mature root mass .. and you could probably cut it down to a few inches.. and with no insult to the root mass ... it will put out a few new shoots... and you would select down to one main trunk.. over the next few years ... and you ought to have a nice new tree in 5 or 10 years ... unless palms are radically different than my MI tree background ... and if so.. i will defer on that part ....

now.. that all said ... do you have a large enough back yard ... to support a large.. maybe huge potential self sowing seed nightmare.. in your yard ... if not ... just cut it down.. and treat it with a stump killer.. and be done with it ...

safety first.. garden design second ... if it bothers you to kill a tree ... just plant a new tree/shrub and mother earth net zero ...

ken

Ken remember that this is a palm. It doesn't have bark, doesn't operate in 'tree time' and its canopy doesn't get bigger the way a tree's does when it gets older and develops a crown.

And single-trunked palms don't grow from teh stump. If you cut the trunk off, you kill the palm. Palms grow from the tip.

Palm leaves originate from the center of the plant, so if the crack is that deep, eventually disease and insects will get in and destroy the growing part, and it will die. It's just a matter of time. You can try filling the cracks or wrapping the cracked parts to keep water/disease spores out, but that just provides a sheltered place for insects to do their worst.

All kinds of things can cause splits in palm trunks - it could be roots, children, an accident, or a lightning strike. Tall palms act like lightning rods if they are the tallest thing in the area. They can also split from uneven watering or flooding (which I hear is rampant in Miami now). It probably started as a tiny crack, but as the inner tree expanded, the outer "bark," which is actually now dead, was split further and further.

Bananas grow the same way, but their outer leaves peel completely off the plant. Palm trunks don't, and you can see where former fronds were from the circles on the trunk.

I'd take it out if I were you. Better safe than sorry.

That's too bad. It looks like a neat palm. Maybe you can save some of the seeds (I think I see some way up there) and plant them where there's more room.

I guessed the palm was damaged by the roots of the adjacent shaving brush tree, because the shaving brush tree roots were doing a lot of damages farther away from it's trunk.

It has lifted a whole section of wood fence pickets about 20 feet away.

I have a walkway on the side of the yard that is lined with a grid of 20"X20" stepping stones, about 20' away in another direction, it lifted these stepping stones a few inches off.

It even lifted the two central air conditioning compressors and the concrete slabs they sit on.

That's about 10 feet away. The palm is 10 inches away from the main trunk. It's not a lightning strike that I know, I have seen a lightning strike on a tree.

I worry about what this tree's root may do to my concrete foundation.

It will break and crack it up

I'd take out the shaving brush tree. If it's doing that to your a/c units, it's probably damaging your foundation.