Giles Hill

Possibly Postia for the white one?

Your enthusiasm is infectious Tony and the photos are always a pleasure to see!

I ordered it when I read your original post Charlie, I agree it looks good having had a flick through - the TSO arb books seem to me to be consistently good.

Think again Tony, how about yourself?

My life is a series of disappointments. BTW, I just wondering why a helicopter had come to mind rather than something equally unachievable like a gin palace yacht or a Bentley. Then I remebered the avatar. I live near Wattisham army base and those things are flying over all the time.

I know the feeling... Here's some of my gripes: My work has me waking up at 3 or 4 am, thinking about stuff I'm working on / need to do. Lack of sleep and sitting on your backside in front of computer for 12 hrs a day every day for several years is not good for you. My daily exercise routine involves coming downstirs in the morning and nipping outside for a ciggy. Everyone want's everything done yesterday, I get so tied up in meeting deadlines that I never get round to invoicing. I don't spend enough time with the kids There's no time to go fishing I can't afford a helicopter etc etc On the plus side, I realise that most of my 'problems' are down to me being me and I can address them before they get too out of hand - I'm giving up smoking again, catching up on 6 months of invoicing, making a bit of time for the kids, even had a couple of (short) fishing trips...

To be fair, if you hold a junior position in a large organisation as it sounds like Callum did, then it is often not the type of environment where you would be expected or encouraged to go out touting for business. Staff are taken on when times are good and dropped when things slow down. I can understand that if you are a small cog in big machine and your position looks vulnerable you would be looking out for yourself, rather than thinking of ways to win the next big deal for the company - and it would need to be BIG - just to secure your job for another few months.

I'd like to do the Lantra PTI myself when I get the chance, I don't think it would help me get any more work, but I'd like to do it to test myself...

Good advice. I would suggest you start trying to pick up work in the subject areas that you are experienced in or are that you find interesting. If this happens to be Risk Assessment then QTRA might suit you. Personally I've not found the need to sign up to these kind of risk assessment systems, because most of my arb work is to do with BS 5837. I have had just one occasion where I needed A QTRA report. I was too busy to train and I'm not particularly interested in the subject, so I recommended another company.

That's my excuse for looking in on here - nothing to do with needing a distraction from work! To be fair though it is a great information source and I find it a good place to learn a few things from knowledgeable and experienced people. The biggest problem I had with going self employed was giving up the apparent security of being employed by someone else. Fortunately I was made redundant, otherwise I would probably be still working for the same company - overall it is much nicer to not have a boss.

You may be right Mr B, I was just putting in my twopenneth, for what it's worth. It's interesting to compare this tree with the Inonotus hosting oak on the other thread, which looks from the picture to have good physiology and the adaptive root growth (on the Inontotus tree) is also encouraging - it looks more like a healthy tree adapting to accommodate the fungus, rather than the fungus taking advantage of an unhealthy tree.

That canopy doesn't look great though - it seems very sparse at the ends of the branches, it's denser in the middle, but is that epicormic-type growth? What are the ground conditions like around the tree and have they been changed in recent years? The Merip might not be the cause, but I think it might be a symptom. I'd be suspicious that something isn't quite right with the roots, given the poor state of the canopy and the fact it has a fungi that specialises is in root decay. Also the fact that it's being hosted by a species that is normally resistant to it might say something about the physiology of the tree. I think I'd consider getting someone who knows what they're doing involved to do a root investigation with an airspade. But then again, I'm only a landscape architect pretending to be an arb.

That sounds like a 'standard' condition, rather than one written specifically for your planning permission. I would normally expect it to be followed by something along the lines of this: Any trees, hedgerows or shrubs removed or which die or become dangerous, damaged or diseased before the end of a period of five years after completion of the development hereby approved shall be replaced with new trees, hedging or shrub species (of such size species and in such number and position as maybe agreed in writing), before the end of the first available planting season (1st November to 31st March) following their loss or removal. I would consider applying to have the condition varied as I agree it does appear vague and also appears unduly onerous - on the face of it, it doesn't put any limit on what you need to get permission for removing, so conceivably you would need permission if, for example you plant a small ornamental shrub and then decide to remove it, or if you want to remove a sycamore sapling that has self-seeded in your patio! If you have shown trees to be removed on the drawings that are listed in the planning permission, then you should not need to apply to have these removed. You mentioned that they wanted the site to be planted up - presumably there is another condition relating to this? It might be helpful to take a look at the whole planning permission - it is normally possible to do this on-line if you don't mind letting me have the name of the Local Authority and the planning application number? Feel free to send it by PM if you don't want to put it on here.

Planning conditions relating to retention of trees / new landscaping normally state the number of years for which they apply. They normally say something along the lines of 'if a tree fails or is is removed within 5 years then it shall be replaced'. Therefore the condition only applies for the period stated, so the trees are not protected by the planning permission after the 5 year (or whatever) period. It may not be as simple as that though and a lot will depend on what the current land designation is. You mentioned that the planners said the area was woodland? If this is the case then your rights to use the land are different to what they would be if it were residential land. In any event, the Local Authority can make whatever conditions they beleive to be appropriate and they have powers to enforce them. You can apply to have planning conditions varied or omitted, but by the sounds of it you might be best looking at ways of satisfying the condition in such a way that the area is designed to meet your needs whilst in their eyes being a woodland, rather than a dog-walking field. I'd suggest working up scheme that is designed and managed to enhance the woodland ecology of the area, rather than just creating a sterile plantation. Your proposal might include clearings for habitat diversity (dog walking), a managed woodland ride to encourage butterflies (dog walking), ponds, coppices etc. I spend most of my life drawing up schemes to satisfy planning conditions and if possible finding the middle ground between local authority requirements and developer's wishes. If this kind of thing is helpful, it would be easier to advise you if you post the exact wording of the entire condition(s).

''Stop the car, I'm going to...''

There seem to be 2 issues: 1. The condition of the tree - if the tree is presenting a hazard, rather than just getting old, removal under a TPO application should be appropriate. On the other hand, applying to remove a large mature TPO tree on the basis of a BS5837 development report may be hard to justify particularly if no reasoning for the decline is suggested, or the reasoning is vague. Some trees seem to go into decline for a while, then recover. 2. Building in proximity to a TPO tree: If your building is 12.5m away then there should be scope to justify the development, either on the basis of a minor incursion into the RPA supported by a method statement, or by altering the shape of the RPA - see para 5.2.3 and 5.2.4 of BS5837: -The RPA can be offset by up to 20% for trees in in open ground situations -Consider barriers to root growth such as the garage, also is the area to be developed compacted ground? Areas adjacent to buildings are often more compacted than other parts of the garden. -BS5837 states the Area needs to be Equivalent to an area calculated from a radial measurement, not that it needs to be a circle - you could calculate the RPA for your tree as a square with 25.5m sides. The point is, that at the distance you are building from and given it is only on one side of the tree, it should (in most instances) be possible to demonstrate that an adequate area can be protected.

I'll second Tony Sorenson's comment about a book - there must be a market for something between the picture guides and the weighty tomes. The picture guides tend to have just one picture of a bracket in it's prime and the tomes aren't great for id purposes. It'd be nice to have an in-depth picture based guide, showing the FBs at all stages + post mortems. Maybe include some of Hama's observational / theoretical stuff to spice it up a bit.

Can someone point me in the direction of the thinking behind the colour change? I came across these white brackets on a stump a while back that confused me as I'm more familiar with Meripilus being darker. I wondered if it was due to them being fully exposed to the sun, whereas most of the others I'd seen had been in the shade of beech trees. I can post some pics.

Well done Tony, it looks like a great day was had by all!

I like the way planes and maples reference one another: Acer platanus (like plane) Acer pseudoplatanus (false plane) Platanus acerifolia (foliage like an acer)

If the owner wants to keep it and it's otherwise healthy, you could try a staged reduction to make it into a pollard.

According to Keizer: P. squamosus has an ochre stem with black / brown stem base and P. tuberaster has a pale yellow stem with white stem base

Careful, this is getting a bit like that God thread.

I'm going to read it, when I get a few mins. I've had a quick scan and I like the alternative way of thinking / presenting ideas that this kind of thing has. In terms of usefulness, this is the kind of thing that I might refer to in conversation if talking to someone about the bracket growing out of the side of their tree, but I think I'd stick to 'factual' stuff in any written report. In other words it might influence my thinking, but I'd be wary of weirding people out with it. I'm not sure the above paragraph is entirely relevant because I haven't read the document yet.

Try a little foreplay.