Opinions needed please on this ash

[Matthew Arnold]

Polyporus squamosus (Dryad's Saddle) is an intense white rotter. I have felled a large Ash with it. The tree was a twin stem with a big (35" DHB) leaning heavily toward a busy footpath. The original plan was to just remove the leaning limb but as i was rotten in the middle we decided to drop the rest of the tree. The TO had also given us the go ahead as we hit the butresses and it wasnt the nice high pitched noise we wanted. I have attached pictures of the stump from last year. It panic fruited like mad as i had removed over 70% of its food source. As the tree went over it split the stump (left enough holding wood for a hinge after boring in both sides to find base was mush).

[Danavan]

An ash reduction I did for someone a little while ago. Had branch failure around 12 yrs ago & gano spp(root not stem prob I know) was spotted as far as I know then. She was given a heavy reduction back then. Called back to fell or reduce again. Not much heaver on the over all reduction as she had not put on all that much in 12 yr but significant weight was removed as well as trying to leave some photosynthetic production growth.

Not sure from the pics of the potential strike zone of failure of the tree. But from what I can see a hard reduction & management plan put in place is the way I would go.

Edited June 14, 2011 by Danavan