daltontrees

If you follow the Natural England guidance then an immediate risk to public safety reduces the onerous precautions considerably. You either want to be lawful or not be lawful, or to put it another way you either care that killing bats is bad for the environment and therefore for mankind in the long run or you don't care. I'm not the police, it's up to you. Maybe check your course notes again, the delay and cost of a bat handler are far from inevitable, it is a combination of likelihood of bat presence and genuine urgency of work.

Not quite, it is not the plannig permission that creates exemption but the felling needs to be 'immediately required'. If you have a planning consent with a 5 year duration, you can't use it to fell the trees until the trees are standing in the way of progressing the development.

Very responsible attitude!!! You did ask what restrictions there might be, were you just looking to compile a list of laws to circumvent?

The summary of the Goodfellow report says "Risk of branch failure can be eliminated with removal of high-risk branches." Wish I havd been paid to reach that conclusion!

Cones and needles look a bit too small for C. japonica? May just be the juvenile leaves of Lawsons, quite common on lower limbs right into maturity adn hardly resembling the upper fronds.

I've never come across this Act before but it does seem to come under the exemption heading of "in compliance with any obligation imposed by or under an Act of Parliament".

That's kind of what I suspected. But Tom's original post has been jumped on here as a bit of a rant by a few people about FISA whereas he seemed just to be concerned that "if the HSE decide that you need refresher training, thanks to advice from FISA, and you or one of your employees has an accident then you may be in trouble". The threat would therefore seem to be HSE being gullible or susceptible to supporting or joining cabals. I don't see that happening, especially if they recognise (as surely they already do) that the sub-industries have different accident stats and therefore different H&S needs. Until there's an AISA proposed, I can live without the stickers.

All interesting stuff. It seems t me entirely plausible that forestry and arboriculture be subject to different safety regimes and therefore refresher training standards. I am curious about how many treework accidents there are in forestry per employee compared with arboriculture. Surely that is the sort of thing that should be informing any difference of standards (or the same standard) between arb and forestry?

That's got to be a record for latest happy new year, but cheers anyway and I wish you a merry christmas. It's easy to dole out 'helpful' advice from my cosy office, I'm not signing the application form. And I have the benefit of hindsight from your situation last year. I have been accused of being too literal about things sometimes, but see when those judges can do 5 pages on what 'necessary' means, I think that being literal isn't so daft.

You've got to be joking! YOur case takes in several of the bugbears of tree law (i) does a TPO cover all parts of a tree regardless of whether some parts like troots are not in the TPO area? (ii) when is encroachment an actionable nuisance? (iii) what does necessary mean in the context of abatement of a nuisance? (iii) who is the owner of the roots of a boundary tree? I have never seen any one of these trees fully answered individually, never mind when they all relate to one tree. Initially my thought is that the exemption cannot be used by either co-owner of the tree, that root pruning would require an application and that this or an application to fell could be refused if a reasonable engineering alternative is possible. Plus the compensation clock doesn't start running until a refusal, and only if the application gives the Council all the information it needs to be aware of the foreseeability of ongoing damage.

Just got a 4.5kW system installed. We just make sure washing machine and dishwasher are put on during the day or on a time delay to come on during the day. Basically even in winter the system produces enough to do a wash which otherwise would be paid for at full price from the grid. Our system was completely free. Like, £0 free. All paid for through Greendeal.

I specialise in High Hedges cases. If you PM me the address I may be able to give you a free opinion. There have been about 60 appeals in Scotland so far, I am seeing COuncils getting cases wrong quite regularly, although some Councils are better than others and are dealing with cases very professionally. I haven't had any cases in Renfrewshire so I don't know what the Council is like there.

Sure as heck not the first hedge rage case. I had one of the first cases in Scotland last year where the shaded party couldn't even wait for the high hedge application to the Council to be decided, and (allegedly) cut the hedge down while its owner was away on holiday.

I am leaning towards a hybrid of the two models that overcomes my problem with the Shigo model but looks more realistic than the Mattheck one. I have so many things on just now that I haven't the time to get the microtome out and make some thin sections. Spring would be best anyway, to try and catch a few growing sections.

First one is Shigo model, relies on alternating growth of branch and stem wood, overlaying. Second is Mattheck as used in the video, relies only on branch wood having direct cambial connection to stem face. I can't get the first to work in my mind.

This is haunting me. See attached.

Your explanation is clear. I need to consider whether I agree with it. What holds me back immediately is that stem xylem is necessary (particularly in ringoorous trees) very early in the growing season for the water and nutrient supply for branch development.

Ahhh the penny has just dropped. You are in fact that KT Smith! If you look back at around posting 15 in this thread you can see I posted your paper. I havppen to agree with you etirely about the fallacy of codominant stem unions just being very steep branch unions. That alone was enough for me largely to dismiss the Slater work. I also comemnted recently on someone's request for a definition of meristem. It reminded me that ny model or theory for branch attachment has to recogniuse some very simple basic truths oabout cell division and differentiation. I believe that once elongation of primary meristem has taken place (elongation and lateral deviation, the source of all branches), the residual meristem activity then creates specialisms in the function of the cells to create vascular paths adn thereafter secondary meristem is repsonsible for putward growth and all future annual inctements; seeing it in these stages underlines the fundamental difference between steep branch unions and codominant forks. They can never be the same in terms of attachment or connections (in the Shigo sense of the word). But it also creates a problem for the Shigo model that just doesn't go away. The Shigo model is an unresolveable topology problem. The upward vascular connection from the stem to the branches cannot put on tissue next year. Once created it is overlain entirely by stenm vascular tissue. The annual increment next year cannot arise from the outer face of the branch-in-stem tissue because, even if there were meristematic cambium cells present they would not be able to expand and they would be crushed against the inner face of last year's stem wood. And so the only resolution to the topological problem is for the branch-in-stem wood to have externally connected cambium. Running parallel to the stem cambium until it flows under, around and over the bark collar. Ths could accommodacte all the apparent attributes of the Shigo model including the overlapping appearance, dye testing, branch collar regeneration, as long as the usual transverse flow properties of wood are accepted as being present in unions just as they are in any other adjacent wood cells.

Names! Names!

It could hardly have been said better.

Unless the M fungi derive xygen from tree roots as part of the symbiosis? If they can allow larger molecules like C6H12O6 across their cell walls they can surely admit tiny O2? Will look this up when I get a chance, hut don't let it stop someone stopping me or doing it for me. especially if they know the answer.

Blimey, and I thought I was being pessimistic...

A sound strategy. Just meant a height reduction as an alternative to removal. If it can't hit the target it's not a risk.

Having pondered this for a good while, I think the strategy is to invite sparpophytic fungi into teh rooting zone so tha tthey will not only colonises the ground-contact deadwood but will also put out rhizomes and hyphae into the shallow surface layer arund the deadwood. In so doing they may prevent a barrier to progress of Armillaria by creating a strip of soil exhausted of the material Armillaria would feed on and releasing less complex mineral nutrients that would contribute to the health of any tree roots so that they can fight off infection. Perhaps mycorrhyzal fungi (of the ectotrophic type), in creating a sheath around the smaller roots also create a physical and chemical barrier, if not an allelopathic one that creates a degree of resistance for the tree. I am now out of my depth. I don't know if ectotrophic mycorrrhyzal fungi (which are benefitting from a symbiotic relationship with the tree) would be helped by deadwood. But I suppose allelopathy could be a trait of saprophytic deadwood feeders too, and if so the shallow soils in the deadwood zone would become a chemical barrier to Armillaria. In effect this is like the proven strategy for prevention of Heterobasidion spread in clearfelled forestry. The stump surface layer is killed (H.a. can only colonise living wood) and Pseudotrametes gibbosa is applied to degrade the stumps but also usefully to 'see off' the Heterobasidion. Don't quote me anyone, I am speculating somewhat.

Oooerr, on the way through to the kitchen I just had a blinding revelation about branch attachment, but then I poured a glass of Pinot Gris and it faded. Something to do with what I researched for a recent question on Arbtalk about meristems, that now seems in the back of my mind to support Shigo's empirical findings. Brought on by IanW's pictures. If it comes back to me in the morning I will share it here. It, anything, has got to be better than doing my tax return. Happy birthday post, by the way.