treeseer

Sapsucker wounding now to lick the sap later, yes safe to climb as before. Boss needs to go to bug school; beeetles bore in little holes.

Brilliant; that seals the deal; no answer for that. I'm SO glad I did not chuck mine! I have a groundy who would excel at sharpening; he's too myopic/detail oriented to be good at much else. me i would need some excellent tunes going to stay on it, and then i might still muck it up.

A look at a Q virginiana from the US. https://plus.google.com/u/0/113373224056212084681/posts

Sudden limb drop doesn't happen at forks typically, but a little ways out. Limb looks like it grew excessively toward the clear area over the road, and was simply overextended. Standard treatment to reduce sprawl to lessen strain on fork.

Tony's advice was responsible. Giving retention options did answer the op. Tree had been raised above house but no thinning above that so it is overdue. It's condemning based on 'glaring defects' (which might not be costing that much strength) that's questionable.

Considering the location of the wound reflecting heat off pavement I'd agree that is a likely aggravating factor. As typical our hunt for a Cause in tree maladies leads to several suspects. good plan to keep eyes wide open and attend to them all. Excellent point Marc on not mistaking a nice crop of leaves as a sign of overall health. The severe girdling on the exact same buttress that should be nourishing the dysfunctional area does not seem like a coincidence. Just wondering from afar what the objective is and what kind of specifications for reduction are given for a tree like that. % overall, size and location of cuts, thinning included?

I had imagined a video might catch more if it swept the range of possible viewing areas. Also if it had its own light that would be a plus perhaps. Flash on the phone camera rarely gives good results for me in hollows; liking the phone torch usage along with that scope. Id'ing these resupinate fruiting bodies is the order of the day here. This tree has 21" of sound wood in shell wall, but still cannot get condemnation order reversed.

way too easy. Springs are popping up? then make the water run away from the trunk then.

Does this change your pruning assignment? I don't see why. Yes old mechanical damage, and good scarring, so it could be stronger than an undamaged tree/. Yes the girdler is associated with the damage so add that to the list to cut.

Great pics thanks. good adaptive growth all around that one infected sinus. Perhaps that main fork is an area of greater concern. That and the crown appears to be 1 thick and 2 dominant. I'd consider 10% thinning in top 1/4 of tree and crown clean. Location of wound indicates physical damage, and those little conks are scavengers. Is that a cause for felling? Root damage a factor as well, so some soil improvement on that side might do well. If asked to spend 3 minutes a tree AND give advice/recommendations, the client could be told to either allow more time or accept less specific results. Especially if the trunks are covered with ivy! Removing it was the best first treatment to give!

Yes absolutely; resources would be better spent on the canker disease. Sanitize and cauterize lesions and replace soil, is sop on similar lesions here, and i heard that program was under study on your fair isle as well.

"If small girdles can be removed without too much management time, then I now tend to release them where and when I come across them. If they're of more significant size (structurally) they're getting noted down for future specific works." "The chestnut does look like its separating into two separate entities with one taking on dominance." then depending on mgt objective some ungirdling may be in order. The sight of a stem squeezed to decline pains me; i'm a softy that way. These from today's Acer rubrum left til september. we were tired enough from branch pruning. Note the 90-degree angle on the one, a common cause of girdling in Acer, genetically driven it seems.

How is this treated in the UK?

it is surprising how little will actually hold a tree up especially within a group, indeed! Felling acer I recall seeing my tie-in point had wood>95% spongy rotted. Amazing properties in the living tissue. 'How was that ever still standing?' is a much more productive question than "Where will it fail?"

Visual Optics VS24-6WW 6mm Video Inspection Scope 24" | Borescopes Fiber Optic Visual Optics VO36-10WW Fiber-Optic Inspection Scope 36" 10MM | Borescopes Fiber Optic No 18" model seen in the above listings...have you seen the video model...looks like $300-350US is a typical price. Has the borescope documented any fungal growth along the inner walls of hollow trees?

No parking at all in that whole area now? Waste of space imo unless other plants installed then. Oak roots would benefit from interacting with the right plants.

Several questions here: how do we know it is poorer condition than its neighbors, have they been examined? Too often I see trees quickly condemned but lo and behold its neighbors are truly fecked--then what?? Like that Garmin lady:..."Recalculating"... removal is often the costliest option, because the value in the tree is lost, and the neighbors are higher risk due to higher exposure. Think about it. Who will miss it or not? hard for an assessor to judge, and maybe outside assignment anyway. If one is given insufficient time to assess, perhaps the contract should be renegotiated so a fair job can be done. the trunk is obscured from view but on the basis of a few feathery conks in one sinus (not a vascular pathway?) it seems a leap to section fell. Once the facts are in, I might totally agree but the facts are out there, somewhere. Obviously time should allow a 360 degree view of the trunk; that is Basic inspection. i tell clients, private or muni, to clear obstructions ahead of time to save money.

Probably so; it would help to know your goals and see a picture.

+1 Impossible to assess with all that ivy in the way, isn't it? Not enough info to inform treatment options.

Looks moldy from here. Maybe have a probe or a poke or a scrape to see how far down it goes?

Nice work on that last one, cutting just after that knob. If the ash's stability was a concern i'd definitely have a go at the other--not grafting, big bulge above it shows resources headed for metabolism in the roots are backed up. the cut could be just left of that round wound. the aesculus yes much farther along. if crown conditions dictated, one could reduce the girdler just beyond that last lateral aka directional pruning? bhow are horsechestnut's grafting tendencies? Looks like one trunk wrapping another there?

In the 2nd pic something looks flexible and he's looking in--is that a borescope? The wound on the right looks to be closing well but yes on an open grown dominant tree that hollow would be a concern. too bad there are no living branches at that node; even the size the lanyard is on would be helping eh?

Yes we all could--it's everywhere! Though with that example the burying not so extremne. Just a coincidence 2 threads here about buried willows within a few days of each other.

In the lab they dry soil in ovens before measuring. http://soils.usda.gov/sqi/assessment/files/test_kit_complete.pdf As you suggest, onsite assessment can be good too. With soils as mixed up as these, lab tests may have limited usefulness.

Surprising to a foreigner how often trunks are buried by dirt over there; esp decay-prone sp.