Might have been a irrigation water line. If you want to DIY, start digging, gently remove all soil around the area of interest. Look for a water supply line.

LOL!! Whatever it was, it was NOT a root!! I suspect some underground plumbing line was broken or damaged during the digging or root removal. But if the effluvient smells bad, more likely to be a sewer or septic line than an irrigation line.

OP didn't "break off" a Sewer Line... it would have been too big/large in diameter. lol

Not if it was one of the lines in a septic leach field. And digging out a large tree root can easily damage a larger sewer line. It does't need to "break off".....just a cracked line can leak a lot of nasty stuff.

Read the post... the OP " broke it off. " lol

This seems important to you - I'll leave it for you to muddle thru.

'the spot in smelled horrible and the dirt was wet and almost bubbling.'

This does not sound good at all.... :-(

Definitely wood

Jadee2011's ideas · More Info

What were you using to dig with? It’s possible that you hit some kind of pipe close to the surface and it’s just coincidental that there is a root in the area that has nothing to do with the problem.

Tree roots just do not leak copious amounts of liquid. Not anywhere close to the point that they would saturate the soil and make it appear that it was bubbling. Something else was involved to produce that sort of reaction.

But now that the OP has provided photos, the photos don't exactly match that description. " and the dirt was wet and almost bubbling. I dug it back out to find it was very sloppy mud". I see some possibly clayish, pretty damp looking soil but even enlarged I don't see anything that looks overly water logged, leaking obvious water or bubbling or what I would describe as 'sloppy mud'. I'm not sure that photo shows anything to be alarmed about at all!

.stax, reread what I wrote - I didn't say that the OP broke off the plumbing line (if that's what's causing the seepage). Only that in removing the root - digging and then breaking it off - possibly something else like a plumbing line was damaged by that activity. Pretty much the exact same thing kudzu has referred to in his post.

Whatever you do clean up the roots - for example prune or use saw. Sometimes they can root if you hack the hell out of them

We can theorise across the ether as much as we like but your best bet, jadee2011, is to do some exploratory investigations of your own. Have a dig around. What do you find? You can't fix it until you've identified the problem.

I have no idea. That root looks really red, almost like it was painted, which tells me you're in a completely different zone than mine as I've never seen that before.

In my neck of the woods, early spring is a good time for seasonal 'springs' to push water up to the surface. We even have 'frost boils' that heaves the ground in spots, as the ground thaws.

I don't know what would cause a smell that was 'horrible', LP gas comes to mind but I don't know of any services that are only 4-5" below grade. Unless the smell was coming from somewhere else like a feed lot or turkey barn that's within a couple of miles.

I had water coming from a broken root. And it was just as you described

Water can seep from tree roots . And produce a good bit of water. Especially after a lot of rain. Also the mud has a foul smell. But not horrible .

I had this happen. We cut a 1" diameter root that was growing under some stepping stones. Water/mud kept pooling there from the underground cut root end. I dug around the cut root end and sprayed pruning sealer (tar-like) stuff on it. It still dripped through this so I took a lighter and seared the end of the tar-covered root into a smoldering mess. This seemed to stop the drip so I resprayed the end with sealer to help prevent fungal infection.

it would have stopped on its own.. i doubt you needed sealer nor the flamethrower ...

i hope you didnt harm the tree long term.. with you copious application of love ...

ken

I cut a root to an old maple tree. its been soaking wet for weeks now. there are no water lines in my backyard nor was therse ever a septic leach field my home was built in the 1920’s with city sewers. it has been very rainy this spring. the soil is clay and shockingly it has not effected my hibiscus.