daltontrees

As someone else has suggested it may be an indicator of Armillaria mellea beneath the bark. If it has h killed cambium, the area would be susceptible to the usual bacterial infections normally assocuated with bacterial cankers. That's what it looks like anyway.

Nice as ever to have someone else contribute to this. I will make a few changes to the Wikipedia definition for your last cvomment but just remember I am not trying to invent anything here, just trying to make sure that the Wiki definition reflects established sources.

Looks like an aluminium tree tag to me...

Looks like fire damage alright. Especiually if in a public ark or up the back of a garden where garden rubbish might be burnt. Reasonable callus forming, in time it might heal over, but not terribly likely on an older tree. A straight race, fungi versus callus.

Some definite improvements. Will look it over later.

A large Ash came down in the last big storm and it obviously had been rotten/diseased for some time at the base and formed reaction wood to support the tree on what was left. This area was less than half the original area of the trunk. When I cut it with a sharp chainsaw, I thought that I must have caught the blade as it was hard as hell and the saw went off at an angle. I stopped sawing and tried the saw on another branch which it cut easily. So I left this substantial block of wood on one side as it seemed so unusual. Is this reaction wood sought after for carving. turning or other purposes? I don't know. It soulds like classic tension wood, very very rich in cellulose and hardly any lignin. It would I imagine be very dense. The rings can be very close together, and sometimes tension wood can be almost white. Maybe the turning guys will come along in this thread and comment? If you had bother cutting it, so might they.

Attached is what I was thinking of for the amended definition in wikipedia. Wikipedia edit.pdf

Because they have evolved that way. To succeed in their niche. Disposable fast colonisers vs repairable long-stay.

Jomoco, I am pleased to have anyone pitching in. Sometimes I noticve that hundreds of people have read this thread since a couple of days ago yet only a few (mainly from USA?) bother to comment. We are not disagreeing. I agree entirely that all wood has the pre-disposition to react to all sorts of circumstances. I also agree stresses can be mechanical (flexure) or gravitational (weight) or intermittent loading (snow or foliage). Or bits of all 3 at once. Hence my comment to treeseer that 'all wood is interaction wood'. I'm just saying that the words 'reacton wood' have alredy been defined by others to be restricted to situations of gravitational forces. We may need another term for flexure wood, but trying to lump it in with reaction wood won't help. To pout it another way, if reaction wood is as Lonsdale purports explicable by gravitational relocation of growth-inducing auxin, then butress wood cannot be reaction wood. There may be another mechanism, at cellular level, that is triggering the production of wood of particular quantity and/or quality where there are regular flexure stresses at the base of an upright tree.

Not so. Wikipedia says "Reaction wood forms when part of a woody plant is subjected to mechanical stress, and helps to bring parts of the plant into an optimal position. This stress may be the result of gravity, wind exposure, snow buildup, soil movement, etc. " This is closer to the definition of adaptive growth. The point Im trying to get across is that all the reliable definitions (including ISA, thanks for that) say it's a response to gravity on leaning stems or limbs. At least that's what the tea leaves are telling me. Maybe I've had too much tea. And yes, it's all being researched in the interests of , well maybe not fun but the satisfaction of furthering better understanding. Wikipedia's great a lot of the time, I use it daily for various things, but the quality is a bit variable. The reaction wood definition is definitely wrongly cited and syntactically wrong and also is wrong. 3 wrongs don't make a right.

Oh, got you now... a workout for the branch attachments. I like it! The bowling balls would be fab too. So how are the baskets suspended? Have you put a sling around the branches, or bolted them?

That's a really good article but I don't agree with you and here's why. I am not trying to prove or disprove why or how reaction wood forms, I am just trying to dispel some of the bogus definitions. The interrelationship between thigomorphic wood reation wood, negative-geotropically influenced wood, well-nutritioned wood etc. is definitely blurred, overlapping and subject ot any number of poorly understood feedback loops, but ultimately reacton wood is defined as forming to combat gravitational loads. Indeed, your cited article says as much by defining reaction wood as "wood with distinct anatomical characteristics which, in dicotyledonous trees, occurs on the upper sides of branches or leaning trunks in areas subject to tensile stresses (tension wood) and can perform a straightening function." Because butresses and upright butts just aren't branches or leaning stems, they can't have 'reaction wood'. But clearly they can and do exhibit adaptive growth, which your article explains is characterised by increased wood density as well as butress height. However, the increased density could be due to increased lignin to support self-weight of the trees as they get bigger. Elaeocarpus is an angiosperm, and reaction wood in the strictly defined sense should manifest itself as topside cellulose-rich tension wood on branches. I am not seeing how this is comparable to topside (possibly) lignin-rich compression wood on butresses. The whole thing would be simpler if we scrapped the reaction wood distinction and talked of compression-adapted wood and tension-adapted wood. This would take gravity out of the equation and might lead to a better understanding of the mechanisms behind the adaptations. I'll put the kettle on and have another think about it.

Most interesting, but am I issinbg something? How are you planning to measure and analyse the results? Will you be cutting off the branches after a few years and measuring the growth increments?

I think I may correct the entry in Wikipedia for 'reaction wood' as it is plainly wrong (see attachment in earlier posting). Anybody got any thoughts on this before I do it?

I'd go with Gyromitra, it pops out in spring, and has a strong association with Pinus. A killer, by all accounts. And a nice find. Can you say where it was?

Uh-oh! A raw nerve touched there?. Good eloquent rant, though. Based only on the paper that you sent the link for, Telewski has shown only that young Poplar stems small enough to be bent by hand through 40 degrees or so will develop elliptical cross sections with a reduced modulus of elasticity. He hasn't proven that this would happen in other species, or wold happen and continue to happen in mature specimens or those that would at maturity (unlike Poplar) develop heartwood. So on a strictly scientific basis I would say that the paper hasn't proven any universal principles. It's certainly a good start though. Wouldn't it be wonderful to rig up a more mature excurrent tree (ina sheltered location) near its top and pull it repeatedly from the ground like in the Telewski experiment and then see if it too develops a modified cross section. I would be interested to see too how any changes in mechanical properties of the wood (cellulose/lignin/cell length/cell density etc.) had been achieved by the adaptive growth. A few cores cut to thin section could do this. Anybody got a few £000 they want to donate to the furtherment of dendrology?

Surely you mean a half litre? Only joking. I get really cheesed off with people destroying the language by making up words, and with other people using words they don't know the meaning of because it makes then sound smarter than they are. All words in professional usage ought to be defined, I think. Just heard a football commentator on the radio talking about a team delivering the 'coo de gra' presumably mixing up the pronunciations of coup de grace (pronounced coo de grass) and foie gras (pronounced foy gra). In the end he just sounded like an imbecile. Not life-threatening or even that important but if he had just said 'killer blow' he would have got away with it.

I rather hope you do the decent thing and ignore them?

Please do.

Emm, Scotland, actually. We speak english up here too. What a great exam question it would be to have "All wood is reaction wood. Discuss." But if you accept the analysis in my research here, based as the conclusion is on Lonsdale's work (now there's a man whose command of the english language delights), the answer to the question has to be 'No, it isn't.' But if you wanted to say "All wood is interaction wood", I'd have to agree.

Thanks for that, I love it when people take the time to conduct properly controlled experiments and present the findings in good clean english. The article provides these useful snippets. "Jaffe (1973, 1980) used the term “thigmomorphogenesis” to describe the physiological, biochemical and morphological responses of plants to wind and other mechanical perturbations. Thigmomorphogenesis can prevent stem failure caused by wind loading, by reducing drag or increasing mechanical strength. "Plant responses to wind have been characterized extensively in gymnosperms, and to a lesser extent in woody angiosperms. In gymnosperms, morphological responses to [mechanical peturbations] include formation of an elliptically shaped stem cross section, with the long axis in the direction of flexure, and decreased stem height..." For those who don't want to read the article, the summary is that the stems of Poplar that had been bent repeatedly became more flexible and developed an elliptical cross-section. It's a pity that no observations were made about how the trees adapted the quality of wood (i.e. whether by increasing cell density or changing proportions of lignin or cellulose. Also the stems weren't left to mature and turn their new growth into wood.

Your attachment seems to be the visual part (a MS Powerpoint presentation) of a lecture and containing no defintions. It is not as far as I can tell a scientific article. Are you referring to some supporting article and if so can you provide the citation please?

NB if you go for this option, to download data youy need Active Sync which only works with Windows XP or earlier. I had to buy an ancient laptop just to get my Dell Axim data off.

Pending any new definitions from Sloth's Shigo dictionary, attached is a draft, it is too big to put up as a post so I am having to attach it as a pdf. Any comments welcome. Final version will probably end up on my website, with asssistance acknowledged. Do you think it needs some illustrations? Here's the summary for those that can't be bothered reading it (it was hard work writing, I imagine it will be a hard read). Reactive wood. There's no such term in reputable use. It means nothing and may just be the bastard child of REACTion wood and adaptIVE growth. Reaction wood. Paraphrasing the best source on this "Wood forming in place of normal wood as a result of the response of the (auxing regulated) cambial cells to gravity" Adaptive growth - NB this is a process, not a kind of wood. "The process whereby wood formation is influenced both in quantity and quality by the action of gravitational force and mechanical stresses on the cambial zone". So, adaptive growth can result in reaction wood, but as the adaptation is due to other non-gravity related mechanical stresses it is probably best to avoid the term 'reaction wood'. Here's how I'm going to remember which is which. AG stands for Adaptive Growth but it also stands for ... And Gravity, reminding me that gravity is just one of the things that influences the formation of reaction wood. That means reaction wood relates only to combatting gravitational forces. Let's say RW stands for Reaction Wood but also for Resisting Weight. Am off to lie down now... My website (currently under a lot of change) by the way is jamtrees.co.uk reaction wood.pdf

Oh man it wouldn't be ickle at all. I've just been pondering what such a Standard would include and it's a massive subject covering amenity value, amenity valuation, common and statutory law of nuisance/trespass/encroachment (plus high hedges), risk and hazard assessment, beneficial and negative effects of trees and a bit more. Besides, if you buy a house with a neighbour, there could be no tree there when you buy. There could be a small one. Bu that tree could grow faster than expected or wanted. Its benefits when small could have contributed to the choice of house. Or rthe choice of house was decided by the house's other benefits adn the tree had been seena s only a minor drawback when small. That could change. A garden chosen for children's play could in 20 years time be a garden for growing flowers iand vegetables and it's light requirements have changed simply due to the normal cycle of settling down, having kids, seeing them leave home, retiring, taking up gardening and so on. Then again you could buy a house with no neighbouring trees then the neighbour could quite lawfully plant fast-growing trees that you hate. So the advicwe probabaly boils down to - don't buy a house which has any space within any of the neighbouring gardens where a tree could be planted or an existing one could grow if you don't want your garden and/or building daylight to change within your lifespan or that of your successors. In other words, no houses would ever be sold again. OK I am being slightly obtuse for effect, but there is I hope a valid point in there. Personally I think that if you buy a house next door to a 300 year old oak you shouldn't grumble in 2 years time when it's 320 and eventually bothers you. But if there are overhanging branches you could buy it knowing that the law is on your side if you ever get fed up with the overhanging branches.