Buckling on big Oak

[Matthew Arnold]

Checked the Gillingham sites today and noticed that one of the big Oaks we have on our sites has what appears to be fibre buckling. Never noticed it before which is unusual for me. Here is a pic of the buckling close up and an image of the tree taken October last year.

[sloth]

I may well be wrong, and looking at the photos on a tiny phone screen doesn't help! But the trunk looks like calls growth at old pruning wounds, it looks like there may also be progressive downwards bending and a crack forming on the lowest limb. typical oak

[Tony Croft aka hamadryad]

This oak has some very long heavy lever arms, likely an old lightning strike took out the central leader many moons ago, leading to the vertical scar on trunk, no major buckles, however lightning strikes are a favoured wound for the laetiporus sulphureus and i would expect early stage brown rot within the heartwood regions. This would be good enough cause for a sympathetic lightning of the loads to major limbs, with long term retrenchment a good plan to bring down over a protracted period. A nice old tree in an otherwise vet poor area, its loss, even of major limbs would be a travesty.

[Matthew Arnold]

We do plan to do a deadwood and light weight reduction sometime in the near future. We have one limb to reduce/remove as the bark on the top has completely died and fallen off. The tree is in good health so wont be felled unless something seriously goes wrong. Looking at the base of it there are very few butress roots showing which leads me to suspect that the ground has been raised up around it. The attenuation pond is about 25 years old and is in need of being re-dredged. So i think the spoil was spread around as we have some smaller oaks which are about 25-30 years old.