Tony Croft aka hamadryad

Not at all that was all good stuff, probably the best reply post thus far. Your right to, but i am not trying to change a theory? i am just discussing that the pollard is a viable technique, should be more valued, that people have more skills than are credited to them by the academics etc and that trees pollard themselves with the help of fungi at their core. with regards to benificial fungi, ted green, rayner, Fay, Body they all have talked of it, but i cant read everything under the sun, it would take a life time, though i am working on it. However much of my observational thinking may well have been observed by others, but until someone puts a link or resource up here to say so i dont know, if that makes sense. I would love to sit and read the entire collection of rayner, dawkins and all on genes etc, but i must stp doing exactly that, i look into too much and get too little of a lot of stuff! so hence i am sticking to ancient trees and their relationships with fungi, in particular the major rotters, I am also trying to do a degree which doesnt leave much time for "personal" reading, and that kills me, as instead i have to read about nursery practice and healtha nd saftey regs etc rather than fungi eco system dynamics! you should go over to the inclusional thread with this, i am interested in what your saying of that there is no doubt.

I am still waiting for the really "crafty" types to add, they are bound to have some little gems of information, certain aspects of wood that they seek etc? when was spalted wood first used? i bet it was desirable a long long time ago

Beautifully put.... sweet dude, my point, a lost instinct a feel for nature, the hardwired ability to live well and thrive and allow nature to thrive along side us at the same time. an Art a gift the lost art.... almost!

but back to my main point. The ancient forester knew more of his art than we give him credit for, and I am certain his powers of observation were so tuned he had a natural gift, this was their lives, everyday was spent working the woods. I make a point of getting out to wild woods as often as possible to jsu mentaly log fungi and tree interactions. i know more from this than ANY book can teach me, would anyone say different? so isnt it arrogant to asume that the foresters of old did not ALSO have such insights and complex understanding. O.K niether him nor me coukd put it into words and satisfy the scientific community and write a fantastic article for the forestry journal, BUT put the old forester/me in an ancient wood, and the science grad, give us both a chainsaw and see how many trees each of us pollard succsefully! and which one can describe the form it will become the progression of the decays, what species will change it what ways. the forest is a heaving moving living breathing organism in its own right all through all, science cannot and will never replace "the art of the pollard"

yes they did, trees were a huge part of the comunity, the chilterns apparently is covered in beech because it was a well known town for spindles, so i am told, there was a broom factory there within recent history too. we lost a lot to plastic in my view, concrete plastic, are they better? i bet a member of the public could name most of the trees a hundred years ago, o.k maybe 150!

I guess i should also say that I think some trees make poor pollards, chestnut (hippocastinum) for example. but give me a wood of beech, oak and ash, with hazel, birch alder sambucus, yew etc oh yeah I will create a pollard wood alright. if I won the lottery i would buy chesham bois and re create burnham, they would lynch me now, but 100 years on they wood change their minds again! How cool a job wood that be? re create Burnham beeches from a stand of perfect aged beech wood, just ripe they are! i reckon upto 50% loss at worst, 30% at least what fails will add to habitat and all the waste chipped to the soil, few log stacks, re erected dead, hundreds of bat boxes owl boxes 100 years and bingo! beetle bat and owl heaven!

there are so many other issues being brought in. merripilus deserves a thread of its own and has very little to do with pollards, which is why in my deffence I never replied to it, i dont want to waste time on a subject that is huge in its own right, is that fair?

well isnt it important to be able to distinguish when and why those that do fail fail? or shall we just fell them as a precaution

O.k, put it this way, what if fungi are not always if ever as aggressive as percieved, and that providing certain circumstances prevail, the fungi act as retrenchers?

well that aspect too, but I am talking about fungi strategies of decay not nessceseraly being the "negative" they have been viewed as, and that they may be "helpfull" as a tree ages and vascular old age sets in. i mean that maybe Laetiporus, fistulina, etc etc have also a mutualy benificial life

He also topped them at various hieghts, some very tall pollards indeed. much of the re growth was for specific tasks, and was certainly grown with understanding of form and they knew how a tree would grow in a certain situation. if you pollard an oak high, it is free from influence of the valuable straight easily reached fodder pollards. ten fifteen maybe 25 years later that form has become one of a normal crown again, out of the influence of lower rgeular pollards, the ship biulder walks in spots the right piecses and the proscess goes again. all the while even annual pollard below with nice clean straights for easy storgae in the cattle sheds. pollarding was more complex a system than I think we are led to believe, just that most have vanished, the actual layouts of the pollarded woods lost in fragmentation.

O.k skyhuck. you asked me for answers to your posts, this one for a start, what do you want me to say to this? go re read that which you think you know, i dont want to make anyone feel putt off posting but that is OLD HAT. merripilus being a "pathogen" is something of much debate. i cant say right now what actualy goes on with a beech infected with merripilus, but it certainly is not always terminal failure, at least not for a long long time, it can fruit on a beech for decades maybe a century before even if it ever does take over. i have a photo of a tree, a beech overcoming ustulina and ganodermas. i wouldnt let it stand next to a house, but I wouldnt fell it iether. i think Andrew cowens work is going to enlighten this subject greatly, we just dont know whats going on under there yet and we shouldnt make too many negative assumptions based on a few fallen trees. come take a walk with me in \whippendell or epping and i will show you DOZENS that have had merripilus for decades. the roots form a typr of structure that i believe has mechanical advantages via gravity, like that of a sitka wide flat, like a coat stand, stand on your hands and youll see what I mean.

Sky huck take no notice of me, i just get disspondant when i tried at the start to get this right but no one gets it. I was trying to prove my point that pollarding is not a mystery, that men of old knew more about the decay cycle than we all give them credit for, that even our oldest and most revered pollards with certain techniques involving advantigous root encouragment could be carried over to the next millenia, (for history and learning and continuos habitat) that I KNOW pollarding is/wasnt done initialy with little 6-12inch wounds that these old lapsed pollards just need somone with some balls and experiance to get the retrenching back to a sustainable form etc etc etc and I wasnt suggesting that anyone go HACKING, iether in burnham beeches or in a back yard in a urban area, so Huck, what did you ask me again? I am listening and i cant be on here ALL the time! bear with me, a lot of people have posted!

sarcy!

probably similar to trees responses above ground, but magnified! ie beeches sensitive, planes hardy

in fact, stuff it, I cant be bothered. L8ers.

I sincerely apologise old chum, as for not posting in my threads, thats your choice, i aint going to cry over it! all you do is grill meand give me a hard time anyways! lol, tis all good though. as for my content having no substance, your absolutley right hence I am keeping back till i work out how to explain what i am saying and what i mean. i aint a smart arse, and I have no education, so forgive my ordasity in having any attempt at an opinion!

R.I.P its never worth it, get the lads in.

yes i agree, whilst I wont deny the place for aesthetics and amenity value, the most revered, characterfull, biologicaly diverse trees are old pollards, they are safe, home to hundreds if not thousands of organisms above ground, and millions below. They carry rare fungi and beetle populations through the ages, centuries, and if we dont have pollards in our towns, the rural ones will become so distant and fragmented those life forms will degrade as their genes gradualy fizzle out as they have no accses to a diverse range/community. too many benifits to list, and seriously, does a tree care that its hairs in a mess today? lol i love trees, but no one is going to tell me that pollarding an oak in a small urban garden is NOT better than felling it. And shigo i am sure said it was better to fell than top/pollard IS the same thing! all internodal

take a camera, visit a few sites old new and currently being built and youll have plenty of good photographic samples of how why and where it occurs! Lots of good books on the roots these days [ame=http://www.amazon.co.uk/roots-built-environment-Research-amenity/dp/0117536202]Tree roots in the built environment Research for amenity trees: Amazon.co.uk: John Roberts, Great BritainDepartment for Communities and Local Government, Nick Jackson: Books[/ame] Trees Are Good - Tree Care Information give you a good start, but do check out the arboricultural information exchange site, good site AIE

thanks andy, an shreks wee bro!

I had to show you all those fine reductions BEFORE starting this, for obvious reasons. That image of a topped tree is appaling, and wasnt done with any regard to form, ethics, nor function. Even a pollard needs to be made with considerartion to form, function etc etc. No one is talking of how a tree and a fungus intereact and cause often less damaging loss of limbs in old age, allowing a tree to effectivley self pollard. nor the image of the advantigous root forming in the crotch of a included fork, common on beeches, ash and many broadleaves, even hornbeam. not one mention of the continuation of fungi and beetle habitation, one person mentiond bats, good shout. if we had more bats wouldnt we have less troublesome moths? but i digress, and i have lost the essence of this threads purpose. i am watching, but trying to figure out how i might convince you that trees and fungi (not all fungi) have learned to co exist in a mutualy benificial way, even to the point of assited retrenchment and longevity. Oh and that pollarding is good!

Hard to choose, but this one i really like, my first walk at Hatfield.

yeah, o.k, you guys win. i shall retreat back to my own study and continue to get it right, while you all have a good old chat about lady gaga! lmao:001_tt2:

Funny I thought that too!