Amelanchier

When I've sorted my life back out again I'll make a proper summary post/thread.

All fine now. Dunno whether that was you or me, but it works.

Ain't got a clue. Sorry. Just checked a bunch of other pages and no joy. IE 8 before you ask! I'll muck about with a few settings. Hang on.

Nope. None of them... See?

I'll be there. It'll be good to catch up.

I'm sure if the OP wanted to kick that particular hornets nest, he would have. However, as he didn't - let's leave it unkicked please.

Good solid spec. If you gave similarly solid reasons for the work then appeal the decision.

That's interesting. Did you forget that you registered with the email [email protected]? I assume the units that you have can't be that good because you initally had problems putting logs in a bag and you work for a company that makes baggers...

There. Another thing we agree on! Soon you'll come round to my individualistic, boundary-led, reductionist western hegemonic science and be able to get on with your life.

Actually, I'm writing an Implications Assessment right now(ish) - how's that for effort? And no-one demolishes entropy, it demolishes you. Even grumpy ex new age hippies.

Nope I meant that Alan has probably met people who have... That is one of the pitfalls of metaphors. Even if the coffee could feed itself and generate its own heat - the room would warm up til the food ran out. Entropy wins. But haven't we had fun?

Ah. Didn't say it was. I was picking up on your idea that life's 'flow' follows the path of least resistance and showing that it doesn't. Would anything be contradictory to inclusive thinking? Can anything falsify Inclusionality?

I agree entirely. I've never met anyone who resists the idea that fungi might be beneficial to trees as part of a cycle of life. However, I suspect Alan has (back in the day), and I wonder if this might have coloured this particular view.

Ok - how about the metaphor involving a cup of coffee? Hot coffee + cold room + time = cold coffee + imperceptivley warmer room. That is the way of the current universe. Entropy is simply a measure of the state of the energy within the system - when the energy is focused in one point of the room (the coffee cup) the entropy is low. It increases as the coffee cools and the room warms until they are the same temperature. When they reach this point, the entropy has been maximised. The problem for life is that maximum entropy equals death if not oblivion. Because we occupy a vanishing small proportion of our universe, the balancing of our hot coffee (you, me, cacti, jenson interceptors & tapeworms) with the cold empty vastness of the room within which we live (space, dark matter, stupid massless particles that haven't even got names) is both inevitable and absolute. Life bucks this trend towards maximising entropy. Life is like hot coffee that stays hot. It therefore resists the 'flow'. It does this by creating order; replicating, mutating and evolving from simple unicellular beasties into Oaks, Dolphins and Mosquitos. As I said, self organisation can be seen in natural processes. Shake your cereal box and the bigger bits come to the surface (gravitational sieveing). Pool and ripple formation in rivers. Ice spikes freezing water. My bloody beach cusps. Sand dune formation. Even more self-organisation can be seen in flocking animals, social insects and traffic, but it always arises from simple processes - and it never lasts forever. Its fragile. Why does the predator pick the easiest prey? When you've got a mountain to climb, you pick the easiest route. You're still climbing a mountain though and when you get to the top, entropy wins anyway.

To summarise; you stated that "life is flow" and that it follows the path of least resistance. It doesn't - it does quite the opposite, it follows the path of most resistance. The path of least resistance would be to succumb to entropy.

It would seem that bioluminescence offers a way to distinguish between individual species of Armillaria mycelium. Research indicates that luminescence of the sapro A. gallica is enhanced by additional light whereas the more parasitic A. mellea and A. tabescens show an aborting of the phenomena in the same conditions. Dynamics of bioluminescence by Armillaria gallica, A. mellea and A. tabescens -- Mihail and Bruhn 99 (3): 341 -- Mycologia So, peel some bark off, wait til its dark and rock up with a torch?!

I've just realised that you can even see entropy operating in most of my threads as the rigid well defined discussion disintegrates into sporadic inanity. Ho hum

Entropy defines the progress from order to chaos over time. Ordered systems become less ordered. Hot flows to cold. Stuff breaks. Its been described as our inbuilt arrow of time. We can see the progress of causality (and therefore time) because we know that things happen in a one way process. We can't get back there from here because everything has changed. As much as I would like the tepid cup of coffee in front of me to spontaneously reheat itself, it ain't gonna happen. Note that physical laws don't prevent it from doing so - they are reversible in any other sense. Its just that entropy doesn't work that way. Life on the other hand creates organisation, it fights entropy. Self organisation as a natural phenomena is quite common. I once spent months on the beaches of Norfolk measuring repeated cusp formations in the sediment that had been created by the waves (in a previous life as a Geographer). Indeed it has been postulated that life might be even be defined as a sustained self organisation of matter. But even complex things like badgers, helicopters, fine malts, ideologies and creeds all degrade in time. Entropy wins because the game is rigged. Essentially, the rules of our game are simple (at least on this level). We resist the inevitable nothing of universal equilibrium for as long as we can, and have a good time doing it. On the plus side Tony, we agree on one thing - there is a flow. Its just not a flow you wanna go with.

What wouldn't thermodynamics have to do with?

I'd suggest life is resistance itself, self-organisation against entropy. But then, if I did that I'd be getting involved in all this again so I'd better not.

Chalky White at Treeworker Training out near Fakenham. Telephone: 01328 863620 Email: [email protected]

Ha. We should start a thread where we congratulate each other! Problem is it's closer to 10 o'clock! I realised after posting. I'd still suggest busting out a chisel to check if there is an associated area of damage. It might be an outlier...

Inspired sir. Inspired.

You need to get invasive IMO. Get some of that bark off around those lesions (you will need consent due to the TPO) - are they isolated or part of a wider tounge of necrosis? How about the often associated Agrilus spp. exit holes (maybe one at 11 o'clock in pic 5)? Armillaria produces similar lesions (though the height seems to be inconsistent) but obviously with a mycelium and different smell! I've often considered decompaction/mulching to be the arb version of the GP's favourite - "...couple of days bed rest." Almost certainly benign (although perhaps not economically) and likely to be benefit whatever the ailment.

Was aware of this Norfolk County Council project when I was in post and always wondered where it would go and what had happened to it. I had also seen the planting schemes in two of the test sites and hadn't even realised the position changes. I'll try to get some pictures when I'm next passing through. Should be an interesting area of study to watch - if there are real results locally, there may be some national interest. Tree scheme slows down fast drivers - Motoring News, Motoring - The Independent