daltontrees

I'm nt so sure about that, if the question is whether the yews are trees and threrfore that the TPO stands. Inspectors notoriously steer well clear of that sort of judgement and say it is a matter for the courts. Even the Secretary of State says this, and the Inspectors are his minions.

I'm perplexed, I have cut down loads of big Norways and not seen anything quite as clear as this inside. Is til say the p[attern suggets major trauma. So does the tree blowing over. I hope you made a couple of table tops out of discs. I'd have one for sure.

Where is this stated in law or guidance? Also, as someone's dictionary definition of a hedge shows, a hedge is a row of trees. Trees can be TPO'd. Also (again) if it is TPO'd it is protected, rightly or wrongly for whatever historic reasons. If there was an application for planning permission that necessitated its removal and it's removal was not supported by tree report and compelling arguments, that is a straight refusal and should be a refusal at appeal too. I am basing this on the principles supported in a recent similar appeal case in Scotland (the subject of an article, hopefully, in the Scottish Branch section of the next Arb Mag). The advice to "State you give him/her a set number of days to respond in writing with the details of the piece of legislation which protects this specific hedge otherwise it will be getting removed" is in my opinion fundamentally flawed, notwithstanding the frustrations that everyone might be feeling. There is a right way to go about this, and that aint it. But you haven't given enough info to say yet what the right way is. Anyway, I am genuinely interested to hear where this 'hedges cannot be TPOd' rule comes from. The Govvernment guidance on high hedges, for example, refers to 'trees that form a hedge' which are TPO'd.

wet chip might stick a bit in the corners and up the front, but just needs a jiggle to get it moving.

The berry is the swollen ovary with a fertilised seed in it. Looks like one of the flowers didn't get fertilised, hence no berry. Can definitely see it in two of the pics.

Someone else asked this recently. Use the search facility to find the thread.

I'd agree with the lightning damage suggestion if it goes all the way to the tips. Limited evidence from the photos but the damage seems to cross the grain, meaning it's superficial rather than a crack. Even if it is Scots Pine, that much torsion is very unlikely. In my exerience any torsion in Scots Pine is rare.

Don't be ridiculous! You're in Ireland, he'd never fit a tree like that on the ferry.

Oh wait a minute, there's a no returns policy on it, that's no use!

Hilarious, I'm going to watch it too. Maybe even 'Buy it Now' to get my free leaf through the post.

I did mine with Chris Simpson, he's a great teacher. Very patient. He was at the Agricultural College (SAC) but he's now out on his own, in Hamilton. Matthew Copoper at SAC still does them, he is based at Penicuik but possibly still delivers the courses at Auchincruive. He's an assessor too and a useful guy to know. He assessed me for my CS39. Doesn't tolerate sloppy technique.

I had a good root about in my library last night for stuff about tyloses. If anyone wants to have a look a ttheir own books, Shigo's Modern Arboriculture is quite astonishingly clear about them. The gist is this. Firstly there are broadly 2 types of hardwoods, there is ring porous and there's diffuse porous. Ring porous trees develop a few large new water conducting vessels in the new wood in spring and use these to conduct huge amounts of water to develop new foliage. They use only this year's ring and last year's ring for water transport. The previous 8 to 10 years' rings are used mainly for water storage but not transportation. Further back, the old wood is converted to heartwood by tylosis and by the secretion of gums, tars and other chemicals and by the cells effectively dying. Diffuse porous trees develop many smaller vesels in new wood and keep doing so all summer. All rings, old and new, are used for water transport. And here's the crucial point. Diffuse porous trees do not develop tyloses. Secondly (bear with me, I'm aiming to get to a punchline as quickly as I can), tyloses develop into the lumina (the air space) in dead water conducting vessel cells from adjacent living parenchyma cells. Those cells are the ones that also produce the gums and tars. It is an active process by living cells. When they're dead they can't do it any more. OK, I was relieved to find out that Castanea sativa (Sweet Chestnut) is indeed ring porous and can develop tyloses. But we can also expect about 10 years' worth of rings of wood to be well adapted to water storage. And beyond that we can expect permanently tylosed closed-off gummed up heartwood which if it contains any free water will be locked in. Still with me? Good. So when Sweet Chestnut is cut into logs, the living cells will live long enough to produce tyloses and block the ends of the water vessels, trapping the water in. How long will it live? I would have said a few weeks, maybe a couple of months. After that it won't be able to produce new tyloses or gums/tars to block vessels. Meantime it's business (or lack of it) as usual for the heartwood, it will be slow to lose any water it has. So, the re-trimming might work well for the outer 10 years' of rings to release trapped water. That's about all I can think to add just now. Except that I see Sweet Chestnut cut open so infrequently that I cna't recall whether the heartwood forms after 10 years or some longer period. I am sure this 10 year 'rule' varies a lot from species to species. Does anyone out there know what it is for Sweet Chestnut or any other species like Oaks, Robinias, Elms?

I think it is said of Castanea sativa that it was introduced to Britain by the romans as a source of nuts but that it isn't warm enough here for the nuts to develop well enough to be a useful food source. So they seem to be able to do well enough here in damp cooler situations, living for hundreds of years. See post to follow about tylosis and maybe you will still think that it is something to do with climate.

I would have said to his credit that it's evidence rather than speculation that drives him. And of course I meant to say that "t/R sits in my VTA toolbox..." etc.

Hey, that's quite exciting. I just had a quick surf of the net for any relevant publications. The ony one that jumps out is one that says "Tyloses form in xylem vessels in response to various environmental stimuli, but little is known of the kinetics or regulation of their development. "Preliminary investigations indicated that wounds seal quickly with tyloses after pruning of grapevine shoots. In this study, tylose development was analyzed qualitatively and quantitatively at different depths and times from pruning cuts along current-year shoots of grapevines at basal, middle, and apical stem regions. Tyloses developed simultaneously within a single vessel but much separated in time among vessels." Maybe the thing to do is to find the answer to your own question by monitoring the moisture content of all of the logs but re-trimming one or two logs a month. You might then get a different drying weight for each log that can be compared with its re-trimming duration. You might not only prove the tylose theory but could quantify how long after felling the tylosing reaction continues.

I agree VTA is a pretty good system for inspecting trees and so mforth. But please rmember that its primamry use in Britain just now is to decide if a tree passes or fails the foreseeability of failure test, even though it is really aimed at going beyond that nad estimating the remaining strength when a defect is confirmed. I'm going to state the blimmin' obvious (again) and say that t/R rtios and Wagener ratios are nit statements or mechanisms for stating whether failure is foreseeable. They are at best thresholds for when you need to start thinking about the foreseeabiltiy of failure. And I'm going to stick my neck out and say that it will never be possible to create a direct and reliable link (and I mean mathematically) between extent of hollowness and relative likelihood of failure. It doesn't mean we shouldn't try. It definitely doesn't mean we shouldn't have a bit of harmless fun speculating in even the most unscientific of ways. But if the t/R ratio could speak, like Mark Twain it might say " Reports of my death are greatly exaggerated". It's a tool, an amber light, a twinge that sends us to the doctor to catch a disease while it's cureable. One other crass quote, but one that I have always liked. "Rules are there for the guidance of the wise and the absolute adherence of fools". VTA sits in my VTA toolbox beside the binoculars, magnifying glass, increment borer and my common sense.

Yes that will be a major factor. But there is another possibility. And here I confess that I am making it up as I go along but it seems to me that wood that has been dead a while will no longer produce tyloses. Therefore in theory once the initial tylosing (if there is such a word, but I mean the production of vessel blockages by the cell walls) is done and the wood loses this function, maybe the end of a log cna be removed and will take the blocked vessels with it, leaving the remaining wood to dry out quicker. What is needed is an experiment. Cut 5 300mm length of chestnut and 5 at 350mm. Let them dry out a while in identical conditions, then saw 25mm off the ends of the longer ones, then monitor moisture content over a period of a year. If I'm right the re-trimmed ones will dry out quicker.

Ezytreev got their programme working on Android for Glasgow City Council 2 years ago. On Galaxy tablets.

Spiral's comment about tyloses is I think the answer to this. If you think of a bit of wood as a glued-together bundle of narrow straws, each filled with water, it's not far from the truth. These are the water conducting vessels or xylem. When the tree is cut, they are severed and are at least initially able to drain or evaporate their water content. But tyloses prevent this. They are like mini blisters forming naturally from the inside surface of each straw and swelling to block the straw completely, preventing it draining. A bit like blood clots preventing you bleeding indefinitely if you cut yourself. And like blood clots, it is a defence mechanism to stop the tree drying out or letting fungal hyphae making their way up inside the water vessels. Cut a tree and it defends itself in this way. It is a defence that operates as a 'reflex' and doesn't need the rest of the tree to 'tell' it to do it. Like an airbag inside a car, tyloses senses the rapid change and pop out (though not as quickly as an airbag). So cutting a tree into logs will form a wall of tyloses at the cut surface, sealing the water in. On every log. So, wood that has good tylose defences will dry out slowly. Depends therefore on the species. Add to this that tylose formation is probably one of the mechanisms that trees use to convert sapwood to 'dead' heartwood and it might explain BCF's question about why coppice wood dries OK when everyone else is finding cordwood does not. Anybody think there is a correlation between wood that has distinct heartwood and slowness of drying? I can see it the other way round, non-heartwood species like poplar and ash dry out in no time. I'd wager they don't have strong tylose defence.

Coppice wood is younger than stem wood and has different characteristics. It is more likely to dry quickly. General theory on this is coming along in a minute....

The client seems to like Nicolsons, but thanks for getting in touch anyway, can hold you in reserve. It's not a big job in Bicester, it just needs to be done really properly. I was nearly going to travel from Scotland and do it myself to be sure it's done right. A ot of trhe time if you don't know and trust a contractor it's better to do it yourslf than try to explain what needs to be done. I like your website, well written and illustrated.

But it's for the LA to decide what trees it wants to protect. If the trees were outstanding regardless of whether under threat, they would have been TPOd by now. If there's an imminent threat the LA will be watching the site for changes of ownership that would trigger an expediency TPO. If it's just a run-of-the-mill tree belt it's not for the owner to do the LA's job for it by flagging up potential tree loss. And besides, the trees could be taken down with no change of use of the land in mind i.e. the trees could be harvested even if the owner had no intention to use the land for anything else, and it would be a perfectly reasonable use of a natural resurce. The perimeter trees remain in place, logs instead of fossil fuels are used for heat, the storage use is screened, a storage requirement is fulfilled, no laws have been broken and a reasonable balance has been struck between public and private interests. The purchaser may already have taken a view on potential for change of use and hopefully has gone through due diligence and made enquiries or checked the Local Plan. It's one of these 'hypothetical' questions. Starting a chainsaw to do lawful thinning is probably the most likely prompt for LA action or inaction. Sure, I would like to see trees remaining until their destiny is properly decided, but they're not my trees and from what I can tell there is no likely overriding public interest. Just my thoughts about it anyway.

If you're not in a hurry, you can fell 2 cubic metres (about 2 tonnes) per quarter without a felling license. Also anything less than 8cm diameter can be removed without license and doesn't come into the volume calculation. So you could in theory clear it out lawfully in 10 quarters (2 1/2 years). If you're not selling the wood but are using it for yourself you can take 5 cubic metres a quarter (1 year to complete). Be careful, though, if you gave the wood to the contractor as part payment for the felling work, whether the value is ascertained or not, you are arguably selling it. Now if the contractor felled, disced and stacked the wood for you to burn onsite in a new wood-heated future building, that might qualify for the 5 cube exemption. I would advise not to be too cute about it. Get it all thinned (<8cm) in a day, get a visit from Planning at that point in reaction to chainsaws. Then take 2 cube every quarter. Entirely lawful. It's just harvesting.

No theories about conspiracy, I merely said it benefits you to have QTRA succeed and its competitors fail. Anybody who cares can make up their own mind.

A bit of tidying up of my own. The Standard Deviation is the standard unit of measurement in statistics. It is rthe average amout by which scores in a distribution differ from the mean or average score. Therefore if the iterations used for the Monte Carlo simulations are evenly distributed on a logarithmic scale the standard deviation (which is the single figure that describes the shape of the resultant distributions) could have been calulated rather than generated by a simulation. And the most useful result would be the production of 'confidence levels' that would stand as evidence of the precision of QTRA. Which would be a good thing. But if you're stuck on linear scales, simulate away. Personally I don't trust it because I can't see it or its inputs.