Is this a type of Acer/Oak?

[Traefaelderen]

Jep, acer campestre. Pretty hard wood and breaks like glass. A common tree in DK and often used as a hedge.

[scotspine1]

A curious attribute of A. campestre (I read about it in a book then tried it when I found a few last winter) is that on a cold day the stem is slightly warm to the touch. We are not short of cold days just now, so it is worth giving that tree a wee squeeze someday and seeing if it is noticably warm.

Don't know why, but it's true.

 

when you prune trees and they weep heavily ie Birch, did you know that they weep more when the tides in, it's caused by arbolic pressure in the atmosphere

[David Humphries]

when you prune trees and they weep heavily ie Birch, did you know that they weep more when the tides in, it's caused by arbolic pressure in the atmosphere

 

I wasn't there so can't really corroborate, but I understand that the Romans pruned their trees in tune with the lunar phases.

 

 

 

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[scotspine1]

I wasn't there so can't really corroborate, but I understand that the Romans pruned their trees in tune with the lunar phases..

 

Really? I was only joking about the arbolic pressure thing but.............this is 100% true.......................................

 

I was once carrying out formative pruning on young Hornbeams near the Potomac River (tidal) south west of Washington DC, silky and felcos type stuff. I was working with an El Salvadorean called Carlos Rodriguez.

 

I said, 'Carlos, look at the amount of sap weeping from these pruning cuts'

 

Carlos, 'yes, that happens cause the tide is in'

 

Me, 'how do you know that?'

 

Carlos, 'it's in our folklore, it's in the stories that've been handed down to us for centuries, everything in the world is connected'

 

He was kind of implying the tide is connected to the water table, the tide comes in - the water table rises and pushes the sap out of the pruning cuts. In a funny way, there's a logic to his theory, One thing he said is true though, everything is connected, just not in a Hama 'inclusionality' way:biggrin:

[David Humphries]

I remember reading something Helen Read wrote about how the pollards were cut in Europe (not just in the past)

 

I think its something like that there is less gravitational pull on the earth when the full moon is waning and at its furthest point away from the planet. At this point most water in trees is located toward the base of the trunk/roots etc....

 

or something along those lines.

 

.

[sean]

Biodynamics......pruning/planting according to phases of the moon.

[daltontrees]

People have probably stopped looking in on this post but I am going to ask a quaestion here about lunar pruning. 'Sap' is sometimes used to mean water (mineral enriched or not) rising to the canopy. It is also used to refer to the sugar rich fluid heading generally downwards from the canopy to the roots. Pruning on the lower stem about this time of year on Acer or Betula usually causes profuse sap bleeding. Now, this could be either the collapse downwards of either kind of sap or the release of upwars moving sap under pressure from below. Or both. So if lunar cycles result in changes in gravitational forces within the mobile fluids in a tree but also changes in the groundwater pressure on tree roots from without the tree, which kind of sap bleeding would high tide or spring tide encourage? Does the question even make sense? I think I mean are there 2 good times a day to prune or 1 good time a month?

[Rhob the Log]

Dalton trees: Not sure if this is any help, but in Belize they cut palm frond roofs and structural timber at full moon to ensure high concentrations of anti-insecticide compounds in the leaf. It has obvious longevity over the same species in different moon phases. This is thought to be because the sap is rising, but the tree could be pushing phloem to the roots and leaving higher concentrations of secondary compounds in the leaves, changing %age mass of defence compounds. Tides I know nothing about but if I had to guess I'd go with the El Salvadorean and aim to prune at low tide and go for a waxing crescent moon...

[daltontrees]

Thanks Rhob. It is all very curious. And I suppose one should consider too the possibility that in a full moon there could be night-time leaf transpirational or respirational modes that contribute to the concentration of compounds in the leaf. Or maybe the full moon coincides with night-time insect feeding and the trees have evolved to counteract this by sensing the full moon and producing higher concentrations of insecticides.

This is starting to hurt my head. In brief, the moon causes a twice daily high and low tide, high being when the gravitational pull of the moon is at its strongest and when you might expect fluids to be helped up a stem the most. On top of that the sun causes a twice monthly spring and neap tide, spring (not the season but the tide) being when the sun's gravitational influence is highest; these coincide with the full moon and the new moon. So, high spring tide is the biggest on two counts.

I have just realised I don't have any point to make.

[Rhob the Log]

This is starting to hurt my head. In brief, the moon causes a twice daily high and low tide, high being when the gravitational pull of the moon is at its strongest and when you might expect fluids to be helped up a stem the most. On top of that the sun causes a twice monthly spring and neap tide, spring (not the season but the tide) being when the sun's gravitational influence is highest; these coincide with the full moon and the new moon. So, high spring tide is the biggest on two counts.

I have just realised I don't have any point to make.

 

Haha! Good points and info on tides but you've gotta wonder with this head trip if that's why biodynamic gardeners went all fruity and started burying ram's skulls...