daltontrees

I suspect you are heading for a cul-de-sac there. Any tree that big will, if it's in good condition, need the full RPA and is likely to be notable or a regional champion (see ancient tree forum guidance). if it's not in good condition it may already be ancient or a transition veteran/ancient tree, and will need the full RPA. But to weaken the argument further, the LA could quote back at you the following guidance from the ATF "In the case of ancient and other important trees this [12 times the diameter] RPA may be insufficient to ensure their roots and the rooting environment are properly protected. A minimum root protection area of 15 times the trunk diameter or two metres beyond the canopy of the tree, whichever is the greater, was set out as a standard in the handbook ‘Veteran Trees: A guide to good management’ published by English Nature (now Natural England.) A greater RPA will reduce the possibility of damage or disturbance to these very special trees, so they have the best chance to provide a lasting contribution to the development." It might seem counter-intuitive, but big trees are more likely to need RPA in excess of the standard than below it. The old hollw tree you present as an example might be less effective at gathering water and nutrients than one the same size in good condition. It might well need a bigger RPA.

BS 5837 Clause 4.6, max RPA capped at 707m2. Work it out what that means for DBH. 5837 is not the law, but if you can't justify deviation from it, then you're out on a limb, as it were. Put it another way, there are reasons for the RPA, and they are imperfect reasons, but if you don't undertand the reasons well enough to be able to convince designers and planners that a different RPA will not compromise the ongoing 'viability' of the tree, then there's no simple get-out. Personally I think that the RPA is not so much a function of diameter but of what is known as the CAI or current annual increment. If so, there is no justification for reducing the RPA for large trees, quite the reverse if anything. And when you get in to veterans and ancient trees, I can hardly imagine more important situations for root protection. I don't mean this in a tree-hugging way, I mean that BS5837 affords veteran and ancient trees the same retention desirability category as younger, better condition trees. Do you have a copy of 5837?

I get emails from them all the time saying that all their tradesmen are too busy and that such and such a customer might give me a call instead. I've never registered with them or given them my details. They must just scour websites put you on a system. Not the sort of work I want anyway.

Yeah, that'll be why the links won't work, if the old website is being scuttled.

What does it matter anyway, simonm has gone

I see the Anciet Tree Forum has a new website, which is pertty much the old one but a bit jazzed up. Anyway, while perusing I spotted tat as well as the excelllent ancient tree management book being available FREE for download there is another 10 page booklet called Veteran Trees : A guide to risk and responsibility" by Davies, Mynors and Fay. I haven't read it yet but it looks thorough. Another excellent reference guide. Now there's no excuse for folk to remove deadwood unnecessarily for fear of prosecution. Just need to get it to a wider audience. That, as ever, in a fragmented industry is the hard part.

Well, 'for sure' is a bit strong since I haven't seen the tree or the situation. The tree has lost a lot of bark, due almost certainly to a trauma rather than a canker. I thought like you that something like another tree raking down the stem could have been a cause, but apparently not. Too high for vandalism or deer. No charring or pitting like with fire damage. But the picture also shows tha the vertical defect continues above the bare wood in the form of a fine rib. So then I thought that the whole thing could be a vertical crack in the wood of such seriousness that not only did it split the bark over a great length of stem but the ongoing motion in the crack has prevented occlusion of the bark split. But I see no evidence of a vertical crack in the wood or any decay pattern that would indicate this. I have also not seen bark ever recede from a split in this manner. So I was back to thinking it was a rapid loss of bark with upward linear continuation (now occluded) and dissipation at the base. If it wasn't saying 'lightning' before, it was now. Lightning can blow large plates of healthy bark clean off a tree in a fraction of a second, especially in the stem. I expect this is because the heat vapourises water-based liquids in the phloem zone where there is no woody structure to prevent the rapid (instantaneous) expansion of steam. So I am pretty sure it's lightning because that's what I have seen lightning do and becasue I can't imagine any other cause. I'm not putting these ideas together retrospectively for you (honest!), this is the way I reasoned it last night. But I haven't seen the tree so I could be completely wrong. Truth is stranger than fiction, and there could have beensome bizzare incident that explains the damage. So, for almost sure.

Lightning for sure.

It's not cheating, it's playing the system to your advantage. Use it!

Got, thanks, and I'm never going to let it go. Fabulous publication! Chockablock with good stuff and with Lonsdale as editor it has his usual impeccable high standard of written english. And great pictures too. Plus the ultimate glossary of terms. Perfect. Thanks again.

Any idea where I can get it as pdf? I am not baulking at the cost, I just don't have the shelf space and I am increasingly scanning my books and running them through a OCR decoder so that if need be I can copy and paste text from them for reports and the like; if I get the book in pdf it is a lot lot more useful

Your first posting, I see. Welcome to Arbtalk. Can I ask, just for a bit of context, as to what your role is in the proposed new BS?

I'm looking forward to seeing the draft BS. It will be interesting to see how it leads in to what you do if you find bats or evidence of them.

Thanks for postingthe research paper, very interesting and as close as the OP could hope to find to an answer. Among other things it's saying that applanatum is faster acting but gets stopped by polyphenolic R zones, whereas australe syn. adspersum is slower but isn't stopped. Both are able to carry on into sapwood. I suppose it makes some sort of sense that the unspecialised applanatum travels light because it is not replicating or propagating the more complex nucleotides needed to produce and secrete polyphenol solvents. Caution as ever is needed, the generality can't be extended beyond Platanus, which was the host wood in the research. In passing I noted that the host list for applanatum includes ring porous genera whereas the list for australe syn. adspersum does not. I think R zone is just too wide a term to build generalities around. The zone comprises 3 'walls' but they're not really walls at all, 3 is just an obstacle course. 2 seems inherently weaker in diffuse porous structures. Etc. etc. They're both a worry then, and if you can't see or infer how well the R zones have developed in the host individual it is tricky to safely say whether applamatum or australe has a worse prognosis. Slow action, too, allows for adaptive growth, perhaps rendering the hazard secure. I have a site I'm reporting on just now (or would be if I wasn't procrasitinating on Arbtalk) which seems to have Ganoderma applaustralersum! I'm now going to have to go and look at it again..wibble, wibble...

Runrig's version of 'An ataireachd ard'. Re-connects me. [ame] [/ame] Rough translation for the sassenachs. The everlasting surge. Hear the sound of the high swelling, the roar of the sea is as I heard it as a child, without change, without pity, churning the sand of the shore. But I'll depart from you, I'll not move any more to meet you. My age and my appearance speak of the shortness of my day. When my time has come to be wrapped in the cold slumber of death, make my bed up by the sound of the sea.

I think what everyone's saying (and what I have found to be true) is that there are no MAJOR differences. You've said it yourself. I have become a bit obsessed with this australe/applanatum thing and I have reached a happyish equilibrium by going on a majority decision of macroscopic features. Most of the time it doesn't matter which it is, but when it does matter it's because I have to decide on or advise on tree strength or survivability. And if it's difficult to tell them apart, it's AS difficult to prognose them. That might be because collective analysis of failures of each have become blurred by mis-identifications for decades. The distinttion could be quite important, personally I have seen what I think was applanatum beaten by a tree's defences and quite rampant on recent fallen trees, but not so with australe, this far I have not seen what I have identified as australe beaten. And wouldn't it be mind-bending if we found that that they hybridise? I'm with Guru Humphrey's first response. You might as well enjoy the journey, because you might never enjoy the arrival.

done, good luck with that. I expect a few folk on here won't even look at it because it has 'biosecurity' in the title.

Great thread as ever, thanks for keeping this going. That 5th picture should surely be on the Lunge Thread too!?

Even better than running bowline (which doesn't grip unless loaded) is a side and grip knot like the Tarbuck Hitch Tarbuck hitch - Knots Guide | Arbtalk.co.uk just use throwline to get you rope over, tie hitch adn pull the knot to the branch. The knot will then set and grip.

I'm still baffled, but it looks fairly Acer to me.

Here's my adaptation of the ATF chart, I have inserted a row for diameter.

I agree, it's never size that makes a veteran. The Ancient Tree Forum has produced a leaflet explaining that veteran and ancient are not the same thing. Whta htey have in common is deadwood havbitat and character, but as the ATF says even young trees cna be veterans. The big difference is that veterans have survived some trauma and struggle on but ancient ones are succumbing to old age but struggle on. The chart you are referring to just indicates that by the time notables get a little bigger they usually have suffered trauma, arguably the start of retrenchment. I don't think it's a ssimple as a tree mvign from locally notable to notable to veteran to ancient. Here's another thing. That chart is very vague, but I have taken the view that the vertical lines on it mark the whole numbers. If so, at 4.5 metres an oak will be on the border between veteran and ancient. But the chart just gives potential, and there is a great range of individual characteristics within a species. So, I had one last month big enough to be ancient but not a single ancient or veteran feature to be seen. The day before I had seen one with much lesser girth making it in theory notable size, but it was almost fully retrenched and was clearly ancient. It was in an exposed position. You've got to take into account growth conditions and allow for there being strong and weak individuals. So forget size, it's a useful tool b ut it is not the defining thing. The features are, because what is important is long-term deadwood habitat. That's what the Neville Fay article is all about. He also refers toa class of veternad called transition veterans that are trauma survivors but haven't been that way for long enough to develop the habitat. They are future veterans. Ironically, they can be B/C1 or B/C2 but as they get worse they leap to A3. The cascade chart in BS5837 is sometimes like a snakes and ladders board...

I love the top trumps idea!

I have always found this subject a little hard to pin down, and as the last post shows, it's a complex business. But it is important to realise that synonyms can persist almost indefinitely. It is possible that the same species could be identified and named differently in different places, then later found to be the same species or indistinguishable. So if something gets re-named, it's not strictly wrong to use an old name. However, you would be doing yorself no favours if you persevere blindly with an old name if the speces has been reallocated to another genus or family because you could be missing out on the understanding of underlying differences between genuses or families. The only thing that is truly unacceptable to me is use of redundant names that leaves room for mistakes. Species binomial names must be unique.