Tony Croft aka hamadryad

Thanks Silky, and thats kinda why I do it!

Force cone method (Mattheck) You will find much of interest and of use here Baumdiagnoseseminare mit Prof. Dr. Claus Mattheck http://bibliothek.fzk.de/zb/berichte/Mattheck-Poster-100907.pdf http://bibliothek.fzk.de/zb/berichte/Mattheck-Poster-110503.pdf http://bibliothek.fzk.de/zb/berichte/Mattheck-Poster-110610.pdf

(Copied here too as highly relevant) A dificult fungi to asses with any level of certainty, the airspade is about the only way of getting a true handle on progress. Matthecks cone method should help giving ideas as to where roots NEED to be. Though root morphology is not as cut and dry as this, most trees once mature will have a cone of decay in the basal region and associated levels of decay in the attached old woody roots. meripilus is one of those that can feed from these older tissues for many decades before progressing to the more dangerous mode of degrading the shear killing fine root system. It is really this action of dissolving shear killing roots that is the danger with Meripilus colonisation. if we have shear kill roots we have no problem, if we dont, we have a big problem. So IMO it is these shear killing roots we should attempt to locate, and most basal investigations I've seen done have been at the very stem base, where very little worthwhile knowledge on the mechanics can be gained as to the true extent of this particular interaction. The other flip side of the coin is the potential for loosening of the shear root ball during such investigations, retaining trees with Meripilus is what I would regard as the most tricky of all the fungi interactions, a very challenging area. One needs a VERY solid understanding of mechanics, decay modes and aging tree morphology to fully understand and give a worthy prognosis to each case. All the evaluation tools picus, resist-o-graph, root radar have little to offer in these investigations, and may as well be left in their box! root radar will pick up the sound upper half of the horseshoe form of the roots but not the shear killers, resist-o-graph will go through the upper wall of the root and then feel no resistance as it is the underside that is gone, this isnt the problem, and it doesn't tell you anything about the re iterative roots coming off as shear kills from the occluding tissues associated with the decaying undersides. and Picus, well that is a butt evaluation tool and we all know butt rot is too low to be read with Picus in Meripilus cases dont we.

A dificult fungi to asses with any level of certainty, the airspade is about the only way of getting a true handle on progress. Matthecks cone method should help giving ideas as to where roots NEED to be. Though root morphology is not as cut and dry as this, most trees once mature will have a cone of decay in the basal region and associated levels of decay in the attached old woody roots. meripilus is one of those that can feed from these older tissues for many decades before progressing to the more dangerous mode of degrading the shear killing fine root system. It is really this action of dissolving shear killing roots that is the danger with Meripilus colonisation. if we have shear kill roots we have no problem, if we dont, we have a big problem. So IMO it is these shear killing roots we should attempt to locate, and most basal investigations I've seen done have been at the very stem base, where very little worthwhile knowledge on the mechanics can be gained as to the true extent of this particular interaction. The other flip side of the coin is the potential for loosening of the shear root ball during such investigations, retaining trees with Meripilus is what I would regard as the most tricky of all the fungi interactions, a very challenging area. One needs a VERY solid understanding of mechanics, decay modes and aging tree morphology to fully understand and give a worthy prognosis to each case. All the evaluation tools picus, resist-o-graph, root radar have little to offer in these investigations, and may as well be left in their box! root radar will pick up the sound upper half of the horseshoe form of the roots but not the shear killers, resist-o-graph will go through the upper wall of the root and then feel no resistance as it is the underside that is gone, this isnt the problem, and it doesn't tell you anything about the re iterative roots coming off as shear kills from the occluding tissues associated with the decaying undersides. and Picus, well that is a butt evaluation tool and we all know butt rot is too low to be read with Picus in Meripilus cases dont we.

and your coriolus versicolour is in fact Bjerkandera adusta the smokey bracket:biggrin:

no worries mate, the name multiforme is the give away really, very variable form, once youve seen the multiforme in the flesh youll see it for what it is. I dont find it that often, unlike the beech version fragiforme or beech woodwart as its commonly known. The fragiforme has quite obvious pimples on its surface too and jet black unlike the fragiforme which is more toward brown hues:thumbup: Hypoxylon multiforme

not multiforme which is only on birch, this is H. fragiforme the beech one:thumbup1:

Kretz is a bleeder for sure, not to be underestimated Mr Humphries, not even in healthy beech, which can control it to a degree it has to be said.

lightning strike

Here we have the walnut, a fine old girl, laying on the deck she is, and phoenix'd long ago. now she is battered by skip lorries and riddled with I. hipsidus, hollowing as expected and in need of some leverage management before a limb falls and causes a panic fell. In the last but one image youll note a psuedosclerotial plate in the central core within the area occupied by Inonotus hispidus. Armillaria can live in the heart/core of a tree for years decades, only switching to parasitic mode as and when stress weakens the host. Note also the black exit of Inonotus hispidus, a fungi of biotrophic nature but smart as Einstein, because even though it can penetrate living tissues, it does so only occasionally to fruit, mostly living as a heart rotting fungi where it can live in long term happy harmony with the host. it does not pay to kill ones food source, give this some serious thought.

So, a little walnut I did today and the conversation surrounding it got me to thinking about you lot in here, and basically whilst I do not agree with everything that goes on around here there is a need for info that is far greater than any of my personal feelings, so I'm starting over. Progress must be made somehow, and I am driven to make it so. So here we go again, round and round it goes where it stops nobody knows! Heres a good one from earlier in the week.... The ugly milk cap Lactarius turpis, important because it caused me even some confusion as it is from above VERY like the brown roll rim paxillus involutus which although is a mycorrhizae is also a very cpable saprophyte (deadwood feeding) whereas lactarius turpis is a mycorrhizae in this case associating with Betula pendula and Quercus robur group. first up an image of Paxillus involutus to compare included, the others l turpis the ugly milk cap, which as you can see has a less decurrent gill attachment and exudes a milk like substance from the gills when damaged. i will never look at either of these two and assume they are what they are without a proper look in future!

agreed:thumbup1:

we shall chat again ten years from now mr bourne:sneaky2:

Ten o clock news covered this today

oh well, onwards and upwards, got the uglymilk cap the other day:thumbup1: would have put it in my diary but thats now been shut down

More PR, listen, NOTHING is going to stop the spread of this disease but some will survive, a pathogen as a rule only takes out 90-95% of a population before either the host overcomes it or too few hosts starve the pathogen out. There is always a few resistant hosts, but we will be missing many ash for many generations.

was that phelinus pini hiding in there mr humphries!

They have to be seen to be doing something after allowing it in in the first place, its all PR exercise,

I should have also said it may not be a cavity per say but modified wood, which is the same, although even soft fillings have strange capacities on tubular mechanics:thumbup1: If at the end of the day the fell descission is made its always worth coring it rather than an expensive and prohibitive picus, this may suggest at the last minute that a fell is not needed

pasta broccolli and shrooms washed down with a red lovely!

From field to frying pan! Agaricus arvensis the horse mushroom:001_cool:

I think thats a smart move, having no tree based background to the post, no bias just business.

Now thats the sort of video I want to be producing! awesome, the subject of how trees move water was one of my readings of late but my book on plant physiology was too out of date so was well happy to see this, awesome.

T/R ratios is the residual wall of the hollowing trunk/stem/branch basic rule of thumb at 70% hollow its starting (in full crowned unretrenched trees) to be getting close to failure criteria (Mattheck) the basal fruits good or not i want to see they could be important the basal language suggests fibre buckling and a thinning of the TR ratio

the only stem failure I know of is in Principles by Lonsdale, its a heart rotter of the lower stem and large strucural roots so doesnt show typical declines in the crown as a rule, many fungi only effect mechanics by heart rot rather than parasitic and progressive invasion of living tissues. Fungi are only very rarely in posession of such powers, and its not Codit or rather its terpenes and phenols but hydration and lack of aeration that slows the progress of decay.