that you can just break off. When I broke off one of them some black bugs were crawling around inside. I also noticed some scaly looking stuff. There seems to be both dead leaves and new leaves on one of them. I have no idea how old they are. They were fully grown when we purchased the house 16 years ago. Any suggestions of what can be wrong? I hope we can save them. I hope the pics will give you a good idea of what we're dealing with.