Amelanchier

Oh - fair enough

In their defence though, they were never made for arb work. Mine have glow in the dark handles...

Ha I bet you do as well.

Now that sounds like a winner!! Not a great spectator sport though!

Nice work Dean. We used to track those RQ18s into odd places too... Override the safeties, send out the boom, have a guy hanging off it, use the legs to help it climb ramps, winch the legs to help it spin. Course it helps when its a hire machine (Sorry Bob and Pete!!)

Interesting, but how would you implement a control in order to determine that climate was the causal factor??

I suppose it comes down to personality. TOs are human just like tree workers! Some are easy going - some aren't. Remember we haven't seen the site. Just some photos.

I'm interested how the general consensus in one thread is that slagging off other professionals is unacceptable and in this thread its fine. Pity.

So it is... I do miss felling big trees. I don't miss clearing them up though...

Sorry, this video is no longer available...

Blimey. Get many takers at that price!?! My interpretation of dangerous as mentioned in the exemptions involves a degree of urgency. If the tree was showing signs of imminent failure then I'd be happy to call it dangerous. Otherwise, pop an application in, tell me what you will replant (or why you wont) and you're in the queue... Some TOs might let more slide on an exemption. Its a professional opinion kind of thing.

Sorry, I must have missed something. But hey I'm a muppet. If you thought it was dangerous Dean, why didn't you fell it under the exemptions??? Its your call, but I am sure that tree will stand long enough for you to put in an application. Not wanting to is a different thing altogether. Those of your who think they could do a TO job and then complain about paperwork in the same breath make me laugh.

Stem gall probably caused by Agrobacterium tumefaciens.

Looks a lot like the homemade amendments Chris Cowell showed at the English Open in Guildford a few years back!?! Have they changed the teeth as well?? "...nella camma dentata"???

I'll try and cover your first point below Patch. As for the second. Symbiosis would be defined as a functional relationship where both (or all!) parties benefit. Interestingly, numerous parasites have ben found that cause changes to their host to facilitate their reproduction. Those changes can be so established that to eradicate a parasite can be devastating to the local ecosystem. I suppose to confuse matters -those organisms might be parasitic on the host but symbiotic to the ecosystem! I think that the generational concept of evolution that you refer to Scott has limits when applied to long lived species. Especially modular, generating systems such as trees. A 4000 yr old Pinus longaeva might be a different entity (genetically) than when it germinated. Does it not qualify for having adapted to its environment over time despite its individuality? Remember, that it would have let rip with an unimaginable quantity of seed in that time that was sexually mixed as well. Double whammy. I dispute the notion that randomness is a weakness in what you call the 'conventional model'. Randomness is a strength. I am also familiar with the work of Margulis but see her almost total denial of genetic competition limits her view. I'm happily in the middle!!

I'd love to chase that up Phenom, if you get a chance, could you get a source??? Which I suppose partially explains why sexual reproduction still rules the roost. Unsurprisingly, the paper linked to at the start of the thread noted that somatic variation was of greater importance to those species that reproduced by vegetative cloning and suckering. Now that I want to see! I'm with you. thanks for the input. Lots to follow up. thanks

It's certainly possible Andy. Though a better supply line might not explain why it has ignore the chemical signals swimming around its vascular system telling it to prepare for dormancy. Maybe, the huge reduction cut nearby has something to do with it??? It was just a thought!!

Sorry - I've been neglecting my own thread. Unforgivable. I would have thought ring porous trees (or at least those that can be said to remain ring porous most of the time) simply share a common ancestor that exhibited the adaption. A lot of trees swap between diffuse and ring porous depending on age and environment. This hints that there is some kind of mechanism that instructs the cambium as it differentiates cells. Now I'd say that that mechanism is the real adaptation that is of interest.

Off track in places! Genes are only 'bad' because we don't like their effects or because we don't want their effects. 'Pure' is another such concept, nothing in reality is pure. Its dodgy ground so take care! Basically in genetic terms, if you don't change, you lose. Problem being that there are many more ways of changing (mutation-wise) for the worse than there are of changing for the better. So trees that don't work (genetically) just don't reproduce, get old, or perhaps don't even grow at all. (Downs syndrome is not heriditary. There is no gene that codes for the expression of the syndrome, it results from the development of another pair of chromosomes post fertilisation.)

As a hybrid though, its a blend of genes. Strictly a sexual event. As opposed to the kind of distinct seperation that reversion involves. I.e., mutation in individual meristems. I think leaf morphology is so flexible that it would be hard to define this as a reversion.

And once again Karl Popper looks smug... Thanks for the info Dagmar.

Hold up. Is it a defect??? Is the crack present in the sapwood or is it just a bark crack?

Tim. Evolution is successive adaptation over time. Don't get teleological. Read the paper, I may not have done it justice. I'm popularising it!!!

I remember reading about genetic mosaics a couple of years ago in "Trees: A natural history" by P. Thomas. Then it cropped up in a conversation about natural chimeras (organisms composed of more than one genetically distinct tissue) at my Prof Dip session. So I dug up the above paper. Andy's picture below shows one limb on an Ash in the top left that has retained its colour a bit longer than the reat of the tree... Genetically distinct??? Perhaps!!

I suppose leaf colour would be genetically determined so there's no reason why the ideas can't overlap.