V.T.A symptoms "the chatty trees"

[Matthew Arnold]

Sounds like a good day what age range, and how did they like it?

 

16-18 and they really enjoyed it as we put in some novelty pictures of us at work. We have 4 students from the school on the course (2 from year 1 and vice versa for years 2). It isnt very instense but everytime they say a common name we ask for the latin name just to keep their brains working.

[Matthew Arnold]

That is worrying, however, Kretz at the buttresses is not going to make it collapse like that and if the kids could reach the Ganoderma bracket, neither would that.

Sounded like a wind damage/compession fork failure??

The other thing that I was going to suggest, or offer for discussion, is whether pollarding a mature Beech i a school grounds is going to be a long term viable management option. Instigating a severe reduction on an old beech can often fail, if then you are left with a large deadwood monolith this could be a dubious option. Monoliths are great in the right place, it may provide education and interest but before long it will have to be reduced, and reduced. Create habitat to take habitat away? It's a tricky one.

 

We think it was the australe rot getting to the union and the fact it was a compression fork didnt help. The kretz i think is just eating the rootplate/butresses and the australe is eating the trunk. The remaining trunk is going to be fenced off 2 metres out from the fall zone and is going to be made child/teenage proof. It will be left to natures devices. If it dies it can be left as a dead wood mono. If it grows it can be managed to become a pollard over the next 10 years. I have discussed about doing a combination of fracture pruning (ripping growth points off) and conventional pruning to see which works best and go from there.

[Treecreeper1961]

We think it was the australe rot getting to the union and the fact it was a compression fork didnt help. The kretz i think is just eating the rootplate/butresses and the australe is eating the trunk. The remaining trunk is going to be fenced off 2 metres out from the fall zone and is going to be made child/teenage proof. It will be left to natures devices. If it dies it can be left as a dead wood mono. If it grows it can be managed to become a pollard over the next 10 years. I have discussed about doing a combination of fracture pruning (ripping growth points off) and conventional pruning to see which works best and go from there.

 

Sounds like a good school to go to.

[Matthew Arnold]

Sounds like a good school to go to.

 

Public school too.

[Tony Croft aka hamadryad]

The conversation above highlights the very real need of a deeper appreciation in fungal ecology and implications in tree hazard assessment, it is also wonderful to witness such discussion and hearing of detailed assessments.

 

I tip my hat to creeper and matt, I will be redundant soon!

[Treecreeper1961]

The conversation above highlights the very real need of a deeper appreciation in fungal ecology and implications in tree hazard assessment, it is also wonderful to witness such discussion and hearing of detailed assessments.

 

I tip my hat to creeper and matt, I will be redundant soon!

 

Having the freedom to give an opinion on a scenario is crucial in the learning process for me and it is testament to you, Matt and all the members that anyone can do that.

The great thing is that when you get it wrong or overlook something there is no doubt someone will be along to put you right! Most of the time. I tip my hat to Matt for telling us about this tree, politically sensitive it must be. What amazing work he is doing there.

[Matthew Arnold]

Having the freedom to give an opinion on a scenario is crucial in the learning process for me and it is testament to you, Matt and all the members that anyone can do that.

The great thing is that when you get it wrong or overlook something there is no doubt someone will be along to put you right! Most of the time. I tip my hat to Matt for telling us about this tree, politically sensitive it must be. What amazing work he is doing there.

 

We are teaching the students that all fungi are not always bad. The majority of them are good and we showed each fungi to keep an eye out for (potentially most dangerous in public and private environments) and showed them pictures of what to look out for regarding the body language of the tree. The one the students couldnt figure out and asked a lot of questions about was Kretz. The majority of questions were why the tree doesn't show signs until it attacks the cambium. We showed them the beech that failed on the grounds and they could see why it is such a dangerous fungi. It was sat very very tight between the butresses and you could just about see crusts poking above ground.

[Tony Croft aka hamadryad]

We are teaching the students that all fungi are not always bad. The majority of them are good and we showed each fungi to keep an eye out for (potentially most dangerous in public and private environments) and showed them pictures of what to look out for regarding the body language of the tree. The one the students couldnt figure out and asked a lot of questions about was Kretz. The majority of questions were why the tree doesn't show signs until it attacks the cambium. We showed them the beech that failed on the grounds and they could see why it is such a dangerous fungi. It was sat very very tight between the butresses and you could just about see crusts poking above ground.

 

Kretz is a notoriously difficult one to spot at times, if you have never had any personal experience it can be easily missed. I myself almost missed it once, but my gut made me dig around into the buttresses and just below the deep organic leaf mold there they where.

 

Its great to know your doing these show and tell sessions with kids, if I had been shown this kind of stuff at school I would have been a lot cuter a lot sooner as an arb (was an arb by their age anyways!)

[Matthew Arnold]

Kretz is a notoriously difficult one to spot at times, if you have never had any personal experience it can be easily missed. I myself almost missed it once, but my gut made me dig around into the buttresses and just below the deep organic leaf mold there they where.

 

Its great to know your doing these show and tell sessions with kids, if I had been shown this kind of stuff at school I would have been a lot cuter a lot sooner as an arb (was an arb by their age anyways!)

 

Was funny as we show them different fungi each week we go. Just before the winds in January we showed them a HC heavily festooned with Australe. We told the students to keep the other students away from it and asked the school to have it fenced off. The day the strongest winds hit it fell and the tree surgeons that came to tidy it up didn't need a chainsaw. It had exploded when it hit the floor and was so light they loaded their Mog up with the entire tree and were still OK to do a small job round the corner.

[Tony Croft aka hamadryad]

went to a new wood local to me today, found an awesome clump of hispidus on the forest floor looked up to see where it came from. also lots of very fine buckles from normal stresses as well as the expected fistulina and Laetiporus induced buckling.

 

see if you can guess which are which!