daltontrees

Pretty much bang-on. Ducting that severed the roots has been pulled out of the ground. You can see the groove in the rootplate where the duct had been. The forlorn cone is quite comical. Here's another picture.

Saw this recently on the edge of a 60mph public road, as the caption says it tells a story. I have the benefit of seeing it in 3 dimensions and a good close-up look and poke, but anyone want to speculate just for interest?

Nice one. Can't help adding Prunella scales, an English actress best known for her role as Basil Fawlty's wife Sybil in the British comedy Fawlty Towers.

|For what it's worth (not very much, probably) I thought is was an arrested Phellinus pomaceus.

The thing I am struggling with is that they are supposed to be the same species. Are you sure? The central ones looks like they have resin blisters, suggesting Abies. But overall the way the foliage is hanging on the few lower branches that are in-shot screams Picea abies (Norway Spruce).

I think Aesculus carnea is the hybrid between A. hippocastanum and A.pavia but A. indica is a species in its own right which most often has white flowers. A. x carnea rarely ends up well. I would agree with the comments about is susceptibility to deformation, canker and decay. I recently put in a Conservation Area notice for one to be removed, the Tree Officer stated that there were so many things wrong with it that he couldn't begin to describe them. The contractor left the butt 0.5m high because he didn't know what to do with the mass of burrs, epicormics, twisted unions and dysfunctional mush at the base. Not a great hybrid except, in my experience, wghen relatively young and vigorous. The main good point is that it flowers attractively while quite smalland young. Also seems up here to be relatively susceptible to Guignardia aesculi.

Aesculus x carnea was my first thought.

That's right, it isn't. And in some areas the LPA is not the Council. Housing should have notified Planning internally. And in theory waited 6 weeks. The key is this. Conservation of trees is a planning matter, if a planning dept authorises or sanctions removal, the legislation clearly intends to avoid the farce of it notifying itself. But if another operational dept does it without any planning context, it is as much a breach of conservation as if you or I did it. No excuse.

I haven't used Access in over 10 years since I realised Ecel does almost everything it does without the fuss. You need a map that will generate your current position as a 1 metre grid reference. Then you need to get your system to insert the grid reference into a database or spreadsheet. That's all that Pocket GIS and similar systems do really. That's the hard part though. If you're tagging and recording without grid references it's so very very easy with any spreadsheet on any computer, tablet or handheld. Time needs to be spent on creating lookup tables, but once done you have them forever.

Are you asking me that or the OP?

Am thinking about that....

Welcome to Arbtalk, I ma always pleased to have anyone contributing to debate. I think you have covered to quite well, along the lines of my attached notes a while ago but with the use of the term 'response wood'. As you have probably noted from the debate so far, it is fair to say that all wood is an adjustment to normal growth. The phrase 'all wood is reaction wood' is so appealing that it could be adopted as the core of a definition such as yours, except that the term 'reaction wood' has very definitely been bagged already to mean tension or compression wood in response to gravity. Hence all the fuss by me about at least getting Wikipedia right in line with published definitions such as Shigo, Lonsdale, Thomas etc. I wopuld add to your list 'Geotropic wood' to clarify that the tendency of trees to grow upwards is distinct from the tendency for trees to put on extra wood (reaction wood) to combat gravity. The next difficulty im my mind is whether wound wood is really flexure wood, because if a stem is removed or breaks off, it creates a flexure point which may just be generating callus as a response to flexure to strengthen the weakness rather than as a covering over.

Jammy sod! The guy wasn't also selling any similarly cheap wood cuttingy things was he?

All I can do is outline the principles. After that you'll bneed to get a soil science book.e.g. Fitzpatrick an introduction to soil sciences (I recommend you steer clear of the common Ashman and Puri essential soil science, it's not very scientific at all). Plants need lots of things from soil. Support, water, minerals, gases, elements (particularly nitrogen and the metals calcium, iron, magnesium, potassium and a few others) and humus. A good soil will provide all of these in the right balance for the chosen plants. Support - the texture of the soil will determine this. Clearly a soil composed mainly of sand won't hold up a tree in wind. Water - this might come mainly from the sky but the soil type will determine whether it passes right through (taking all the nutrients with it) or can hold enough to allow plant uptake and to see the plant through dry spells. Gases - mainly carbon dioxide out and oxygen in. Plant roots have to breathe, and too much water will literally drown them. Too much compaction, leaving no spaces between soil grains or routes for gases to and from the surface will asphyxiate them. Elements (and minerals) - these wil be incorporated into the pant material after they are taken up. Plants will simply not be able to function properly or at all if some metals are missing form the soil. The mineral content of the soil also determines water retention capability and 'buffering' of elements, keeping them in steady supply when roots need them. Nitrogen in particular is essential. Plants wouldn't be green without it and therefore couldn't makes sugars from sunshine and would die very quickly. Although air is 80% nitrogen, few plants can take in nitrogen directly from the air. They need to take it in as nitrates, which they do from degraded other plant material, from bacterial output or from fungi that co-exist with the plants. Organic material is therefore pretty much essential but the right bacteria and fungi can be immensely helpful. Organic material in the form of humus is also almost essential for soil texture for buffering and water retention. Soil texture is hugely affected by particle size distribution. A good soil (a loam) will have sand, silt and clay particles. Any soil that is skewed towards or away from one of these 3 particle types will be compromised. And finally pH. This is a result of most or all of the aforegoing things. Too much calcium for example will give an alkaline soil and rhododendrons will not like it at all. A lack of calcium would contribute to a soil being acidic, and the rhodies would like it. Other plants and fungi and bacteria might not, so the soil might be almost useless for anything but rhodies, ericaceous plants and the like. So there's your potted guide to soil science. For your client I would be very wary of trying to produce 'absolute' results, these can only be done in lab conditions. What perhaps is important for them and you is 'relative' results. Take your samples say a foot down around the rhodies. Then do the same in another part of the garden that doesn't have them and is away from their influence. Try to assess density (compaction) of all samples and presence or absence of worms and bugs. Do the glass bottle settling test for all samples. Get some litmus paper (I just bought 80 sheets on ebay for £2). Now you have some raw data to present. But what I mean by relative results is that if the soils are about the same in both locations, you can say with some certainty that the soil part of the equation is not significant and can be ruled out. You cna then concentrate on disease symptoms and abiotic factors. Soil testing kits can be bought, but they're generally cheap and nasty. The last one I got broke on its first usage. And even if you do go for that option, you might get more precise results but you won't be able to bluff intrepreting them. It's not just a case of compensating for mineral deficiencies by adding plant food or fertiliser. Teh wrong fertiliser for the situation could be worse than doing nothing. Welcome to the world of soil science and what Shigo calls the 'tree system'. Trees without soil are just firewood, and it's the interaction with soil and situation that makes trees truly fascinating.

Yeah, I gave up on moulding a bar. When I think about it, if I value my time at about £15 an hour the new bar cost me 1 hour. I 'spent' about £45 trying to fix the old one. I just hate throwing things out that could be fixed.

I don't know which sources to believe. The UK is probably utting in about £8Bn a year and getting out £4Bn. But as someone has just said earlier it's about net expenditure c/w benefits. Like if you say I pay National Insuarance contributions every year but I only get free prescriptions worth £xx. It's an insurance policy and a return on intangible and other benefits. I'm kind of resigned now to England dragging the UK out of the EU. A nation of shopkeepers, it has been said. Never did know how to get on with the rest of the world.

Unless you say why it's needed, no-one can give you basic advice. maybe you just need to take an auger sample and report that yes it is soil and not bricks or rock and that it is loam/clay/sandy loam etc. and what depth you went to. Some of the most meaningful results per £ I have had have been obtained by half filling a glass bottle with the 'soil' and topping up with water then shaking like hell and leaving it to stand for a few hours. Layers will form and give an idea of how much clay, silt and soil and organics. It's a doddle to take a pH test of the reamining water with litmus paper. The main thing then you are missig is mineral content, and particularly nitrogen. There's a simpe test for that too, but I'm not going to waste time explaining it in case its' more than you need.

Ach, my publishing brain is like a mult-ringed cooker, always something on the back burner simmering slowly for next week's soup (don't know what kind), something ready soon-ish and something being stir-fried.

I know, great saw. In winter I have to put the trigger lock on, full choke and get the tip of the 26" bar under a log. Means you can put your back into it. Usually fires after 2 pulls. Then take choke off and do it again and it always goes right away. Gotta get the throttle lock off immediately though, or the clutch will suffer.

The Epilogue: After trying to get a bit of tubing to insert inside the broken haldle, I gave up. My blacksmith wouldn't touch it either. So I asked my Husky dealer if he could get me a new handle. Yes but £65. So I looked on eBay, none for sale except in the States. I spotted the cheapest one and watched it. The delay was because unless it's below £15 you pay VAT and duty to bring it in to UK. It was $25. The exchange rate made that about £15.50. So I watched and watched and 2 days before the closing date the exchange rate snuck up and the price was £14.99. So I bought it. It arrived from Florida 4 days later. I just put it on, took about 5 minutes. It fitted perfectly and looks well made enough to outlive the saw. No duty or VAT paid to HMRC. Thanks again for all help but this was the sanest and cheapest solution in the end.

And finally... According to the researched definition reaction wood is not a defence mechanism, it's a normal response as part of the self optimisation characteristics of trees. Adaptive growth can be a defence mechanism. See the useful quote from Bowen v National Trust. However, it seems clear that although it could be triggered (as in the case) by the inherent weakness of included forks and bark death and oxidation and infection at the point of compression, this form of defence mechanism seems to be a normal response to a normal phenomenon in healthy trees. The difficulty is that the failure of compression forks with included bark, and the resulting decay, is probably the most common cause of the demise of healthy trees. 'Par for the course', as it were. If a castle was built big enough, no-one would even try to attack it. Is that a defence mechanism? If it had been a bit smaller and someone had had a go and failed because the walls were too thick, that's a defence mechanism.

I have edited the Wikipedia page for 'reaction wood', including the changes suggested by you all and the Shigo commentary provided by btggaz (hope it's right...). Editing Wikipedia is not for the faint hearted especially if, like me, you have the weight of moral responsibility bearing down on you as you do it. But if anyone disagrees with the definition please say so or change it yourself. For now I see it as a great improvement on the previous doubtlessly well-intended entry. Thanks all. A definition of reaction wood will be added when I summon the strength and technical knowhow to do it on Wikipedia.

Mine's a first impression 1991, can't see that it has changed much since then and before Shigo's death. What makes the book approachable is the balance between illustrations and text. There isn't a page in it that is less than 50% illustration. I would have thought Mattheck and Breloer or Lonsdale would be better for the PTI, really to pass the theory part of PTI you just have to remember a few key points that you will be taught in the course. Reading the book will just confuse, as it goes way beyond what is needed for PTI.

That's a good wee book, I saw a copy in a charity shop a few weeks ago and meant to buy it. I already have something similar "Plant Names Simplified" £7.25 new.

There's a finite number of the endings, just need to make sure the ending of the species agrees with the case, plurality and gender of the genus. Let me see theres 2 pluralities, at least 5 cases and 3 genders, that makes only 30 permutations to remember. Easy (not!).