Tony Croft aka hamadryad

Iye! that be the sort of knife a real bloke has! none of those little steak knifes! a thread on knives, in this day and age! what you lot like!

The third vid is defo my prefered method, ton of split logs in not time, havent lost a finger yet! (touchwood!) hope the HSE isnt watching!

i knew you was only being funny dean, I was too, sarcy sod! i guess ego is the wrong word, your description is far better! lets just say ive never met an arb thast lacked character, is that better?

great for a bit of hedge laying! its a heavy machete really, for splitting small logs when going into the woods for a few days ray mears styley!

Phew, you thermo boys are getting a hard time in here! personaly i think your all overlooking the fact that it is still early days for the technology, and failing to see the logic behind it. This method of tree evaluation is going to be around for the forseable future of that I am certain, there are always sceptics, I am not one of them. There will never be a perfect tool, the evaluation of trees is always going to require a feel for the subject, including in ones view of the tree - fungi, thier strategies and lifestyles. The TI camera is going to become invaluable, enabling the assesor an added visual aid to assesing the force flows and fungal colonisation, combined with the other senses. Give this technology a chance, get your hands on one, have a go. i dont think there is ever going to be a better tool for the job, the whole tree can be viewed for a start, the speed with which you could quickly locate the trees that REALLY need looking at is obvious, bats will be picked up as well. included bark, splits in limbs that are undetectable from the ground etc Some people feel a need to over analyze something, if you look deeply at anything youll see faults, but if you ask me, the positive implications way way outwiegh the negatives. The market always dictates what is hot and what is not, and for me TI is the former. Now with regards to the image outputs, for me the black and white (monochrome) images seem the best format for interpretation. what are your views on this Thermo guys?

lmao, I should say i dont mind admiting im wrong, but detest having too!

lol, god how did you guess! now why would an almost t total'er be robbing a booze unit!

oh dear oh dear, some people! nah, Im afraid you lot are stuck with me now, my skin is like leather, i dont mind being wrong, i charge in and lessons are learnt, its the fastest way to learn, fear not to tread sort of thing.

always knew my chopper was the biggest! you need a proper one if your going into the woods, not a pencil sharpener!

Brashers all day long, mine get proper abused, two years now, still water tight, still comfy and do on average five hours walking in rough woodland with them on a weekend, as well as day to day used cos i hate trainers, these are the best boots in the world IMO, love em.

I hate to be wrong, for the record! Tony it has to be said, on having a good look at those images again your probably right about it having stabalised, there is rough bark on the tips for a start. i am going to be anhilated for making such a fuss over it, but hey ho, i was wrong and that dont happen too often! bring on the abuse and massive highlighted raucous laughter! Hands up, and VERY good call sir:thumbup1:, teach me to look a bit harder before i open my mouth! in my defence I just thought it made a great photo, and hadnt really looked at it from an assesment point of view, its just a tree in my favourite wood. When you piped up tony, i kinda felt you was making me out to be a tool, and went on the defence, clouding my judgment. None the less i will be going back for another look tommorow!

yeah im gotting the mickey bit! just takes a while to sus out whos having a laugh with ya :thumbup1:and whos having a laugh at your expense if you know what i mean! some really good articles in that link, well worth the time:thumbup:

MykoWeb -- Articles some really good articles to be had on fungi here, great articles on micorrhiza:thumbup:

personaly I would want a cleaner less cluttered look, too much info on it for my tastes, but they are your cards, as long as your happy, it aint nobody elses business! If i had done them at one of those machines in the local asda fair enough but if a pro printed them i would have expected him to have a better eye for the style of it, and given me an opinion before going to print. remember your card is sometimes all the info/impression a person has once they take it away, it needs to create a profesional impression. simple is the way to go

thanks for that blakes, that sounds well worth further investogation, lack of CAD is really holding back my prospects.

my trouble dean is i dont frequent bars! being almost t total these days. you going start again dean! lol:001_tt2: what have i done! omg! ive done it again! maybe i should have rephrased it/ any suggestions?

to be fair, fistulina and laetiporus prefer and tend to fruit at seperat times within the same site, laetiporus liking a bit warmer weather than fistulina, though as you know nothing in mycology is atypical! i wont suggest you wont see them together, but i will say that not seeing them together is abnormal.

Lol, yeah i do feel like I want to slay a few of these academics with position in their favour at times! my time will come, I try way too hard to not get there! i see others get to consultant status so easily, with their companies support and cpd, me, christ I have 2 grands worth maybe three grands worth of arb books and myco books and ento books and attended seminars for what? all that info is worthless! im well behind on my mortgage and I cant get a better paid job cos I havent a "recognised" cert under my belt, i cant afford to do the CAD course or the Lantra three day inspection, cos Im being crippled by my degree fees. man alive its hard work, way harder than it should be, one things for certain, when i get these things under my belt its going to be an emotional weight of my shoulders!

the only certainty in life is death and taxes! I can understand why you get upset at "certainty" but I am rarely stupid enough to proclaim certainty when I have a slight doubt, you should give more faith in an individuals self confidance, it isnt always unfounded! I am not fully versed on the p.v.b case seems it was little unfair if that was the case, though in all fairness I would have kicked aside brambles to see the base of a large tree, but thats me. When i passed my VTA training I asked about this "level 2 " rubbish and I was told that it is not "recognised" and thereofre of little use, and to go do the three day lantra instead! I am still paying for the beg borrow and stealing i done for the VTA workshop, and it will be some time before i get on the Lantra one. It is not so much ego with me as utter and total fustration of being in an industry that does not recognise my ability until I have passed a "recognised" cert, who the hell decides that I am "not qualified" Whilst I can not walk around an arboretum and reel off latin for the exotics, or take a soil sample into a lab and give a chemical structural textural report (yet) I have never had an interest in that, nor intend that to be the basis of my career, does knowledge of latin for some obscure tree or my ability to describe plant cells determine my "skill level" I cant make money as an assesor, as i will not be recognised, so i will continue to struggle along on peanuts bending over backwards to pay the fees the courses etc until someone finaly says tone, your there now mate we know you know, now go do it! I am fustrated, and have a lot of aggression in me, caused by the fight for my right to do consulting work, i am a nobody it would seem, but you bet your bottom dollar that isnt Always going to be so, this kiddo, is a grafter, if it takes me ten years from now, i will make it, and when i do, i will no longer take the crap from anyone, for I will have earnt the right to say I do know!

Whilst the tree may take the abuse developers would like to give them, the ingress of decay/pathogens etc should be considere as much below ground as above, probably more so given the nature of the environment below ground.

i said the exam (procedure of investigation) would be a formality! I would follow formality if it was serious, and my arse was on the line. Tony, i am certain your a very skilled and competant bloke, but so am I, i may not own a resitograph or a fractometer etc (yet) but I have spent my life amoung trees, and cleared up enough failures to know what I am talking about. with regards to poll v bartholemew, i believe it was ruled that in order to cover ones liability an assesor would have to be at level 2 whatever that means, they didnt suggest that every inspection would require a change in VTA or inspection proceedure, just that the inspector in this case was NOT qualified to be doing an assesmnet of tree condition. I am not "qualified" therefore my opinion is useless, simples. Ive never met an arb without an ego!

The fungus in the image, it most certainly is not the smokey bracket, its form is that of a multiple shelfed large fungus, i,e phaeolus (stem form) laetiporus, merripilus all these form a shape that starts off like your clump. true there are no yellow stains to it, but the image enclosed may help, it is an aging very dessicated clump of chicken that will fade more, especialy with rain as it will allow break down of the fuit body. I have racked my brains to try and think of an alternative fungus that this form could be, but there are so many elements that make sense of the chicken theory. for a start you have many old sativas in the locale, these are a tough old tree to break down, and only two i know of can break these up chicken and fistulina. It would not be unreasonable to make the asumption that a spore of chicken made it to a cedar from the sativas. in america chicken is common amoung the cedars as far as i can find tell, and if it can break up Taxus it can certainly do cedar i had a feeling that chicken had gene variations as Ive seen some very odd samples from abroad, from bright pink to ochre orange, those you see from spain also have a different look to them, maybe the warmer climes? You made me go do a lot of searching monkey! and its cool, i found a lot of usefull stuff and heres a few extracts, "This is believed to be due to a number of factors that range from very bad allergies to the mushroom's protein, to toxins absorbed by the mushroom from the wood it grows on (for example, Eucalyptus or Cedar), to simply eating specimens that have decayed past their prime." Phylogenetics Phylogenetic analyses of ITS, nuclear large subunit and mitochondrial small subunit rDNA sequences from a variety of North American species has delineated five distinct clades within the core Laetiporus clade[1]: Conifericola clade: contains species that live on conifers, such as L. conifericola and L. huroniensis. All of the other tested species grow on angiosperms. Cincinnatus clade: contains L. cincinnatus Sulphureus clade I: contains white-pored L. sulfureus isolates. Sulphureus clade II: contains yellow-pored L. sulfureus isolates. Gilbertsonii clade: contains L. gilbertsonii and unidentified Caribbean isolates and I agree, that is a good oportunity to promote Veteran/ancient tree issues on a global scale.

no problem fella, we all ahve our own views, and I wasnt suggesting that all trees showing torsional stresses are for the chop or cracked right through. But the case in question IS, and as soon as I got the tool to prove it I am going to because if theres one thing I cant bear its being made to lok ok a complete tool! i probably deserve it, maybe I try too hard to have interesting threads. As for the gnome theory, personaly I think the trees dryad was sitting up there with a stack of cheap iceland partie packs got a little over indulgent developed a fat backside and the limb it was sat on failed. simples!

that TP needs a tweak then, sounds a bit like its getting old and the safety has gone super sensative, just like our big TP on the back of the tactorrr! must sort that one out!

i do appreciate what your saying and like i said the photos do not do this tree and its ribs justice. if you saw this in the flesh as I did you too would have been facsinated by it, it is the best one of its kind ive ever seen. I promise you those cracks are active, yes I do know, maybe you dont, thats the difference between you and me, do not tell me what i know! you wasnt stood at the foot of this tree! The crack is active, signified by the pointy ribs, and extremely rapid growth over them shown in new fresh smooth bark.when they start to "snub nose" THAT is when they are stable. Given a wind in the right direction and in resonance, these cracks could open right up and result in a failure, it is that simple. I quote from "In the face of failure" by C. Mattheck P141- "Cracks in the tree also cause extaordinarly large stresses before the tip of the crack. The nearer the tip of the crack is to the cambium, the thicker are the annual rings formed there and the wider are the light coloured increment strips. with pointy-nosed ribs the increment strips are extremley wide and the bark on the rib is thin. If the crack has already been closed by several annual rings, narrower annual rings will now be formed because of the smaller stress percieved by the cambium, the increment strip will be abscent and course bark will cover the rib" The increment strip is obvious as are the extra thick annual rings at the point of stress, hence these cracks are active. sure a stress wave timer would be the next step, to confirm but it would merely be a formality in my view. The tree has a little potential to over come the defect, but it is hindered by its extreme hieght and difficulty in getting resources to the area of stress. The tree has a very thin diameter for its hieght having pushed as fast as it can through the canopy of surounding broadleafs, close (within 30ft) of a road with around 20-50, probably more on a holiday, poeple passing daily. A footpath also passes by within 15 ft inside the wood perimeter. if i was responsible for making the call on this one, in its position and due to its form i would fell it leaving a monolith for habitat. Why? because if i was called into investigate the failure of this tree after it killed somone I would have to tell the court that in my opinion, it had visible defects and hence it was an "avoidable event"