Ill sleep soundly tonight

[RobRainford]

Well, today was going to be a half day ivy removal job, turned out to be very very different!

 

As i removed some of the lowest parts of ivy not far after starting, i found what appear to be some old Ganoderma Australe brackets, there is one which still has the white underneath tbut the others were of the same appearance but where brown underneath, photos of those are to follow.

 

This was on an old cherry, it had been pruned heavily before and badly, which is where the spores must have taken hold.

 

I picked 6 seperate bodies off this tree, 4 from the tension side of the stem, one from an old pruning wound and another in between two branches which were at an included union to the two major stems.

 

I stopped work and told the customer that this tree could go at any moment. Which they later mentioned in the day, that it had started to get a bit more lean since i first went to look at the job abouta month ago.

 

Ill have a video on youtube which is a perfect example of the 'death knoll'. Scary scary stuff.

 

Ill sleep soundly tonight though, knowing that this tree wont hurt anybody. As they have two young grandchildren now.

 

after piecing it down i felled the remaining stem. Ignore the dodgy cut, it came down fine, my angles were just a tad out .

 

The remaining wood in the stump was so soft, it could be dug out by hand, it was a good example of CODIT and the zones of decay, each wall between the decayed wood was rather strong, where in between it was mush.

 

i dont have any pictures of the tree before it came down unfourtunately.

 

 

 

 

[RobRainford]

more pics

 

 

this last image shows the decay zones really well, and also shows how much sound wood there actually was, approx an inch on half to 3/4 of the stem, if not less.

 

[Tony Croft aka hamadryad]

WOT no fruit body photos! your slacking kiddo!

[armchairarborist]

good job it didnt fall on somebody, not nice being covered in soft mushy wood..

[RobRainford]

WOT no fruit body photos! your slacking kiddo!

 

Haha. Strangely enough I had you in mind. I saved them all . I'll get a picture of them all tomorrow. One of them is still in situ with it's old pruning wound. I couldn't prise it off so I cut a slice off instead.

 

No fear tony!

[Stephen Blair]

good call, cracking pics:thumbup1:

[RobRainford]

The customer was constantly saying it's really frightening. I had to climb part of it and even then I was thinking I don't want to go too high and increase te lever arm with my body weight. As I could feel it wanting to come over

[RobRainford]

YouTube video

 

[ame=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iZQApDl02lo&feature=youtube_gdata]YouTube - The death knoll[/ame]