daltontrees

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.

Please do! The terms Reaction Wood and Adaptive Growth are not used in hte text of the book itself but they may be in the dictionary. They are used in 'Modern Arboriculture' though, so I don't want to assume that Shigo wasn't au fait with them.

Is there anyone out there with a copy of the Dictionary that was published alongside Shigo's New Tree Biology that could help out by looking up a few definitions for me? I have what I need form the other authoritative texts. The key ones are - Adaptive Growth Reaction Wood Compression Wood Tension Wood Any help appreciated, thanks. It would even help me to know if Shigo does not have definitions.

Please!?! OP has presumably run off screaming wishing his original question, which hasn't really even been answered by consensus, had never been put. Quoting Mynors "It should not be forgotten tha tthe owner of the tree owns overhanging branches, both before and after they have been severed from the remainder... Once a branch has been severed, therefore, it should be offered back to its owner, and only disposed of with the owner's consent." It seems clear enough to me that since it is not an offence to allow a branch to encroach (many many people tolerate and even enjoy this sort of encroachment), the owner may be content too to own a living branch but not wish to own a dead one, hence the duty of the abater to offer and then only dispose with the owner's consent. The branches may still belong to the tree owner, but he would not be faced with disposal costs if the branches had been left to grow. Since encroachment is tolerated more often than not as an ordinary, natural facet of life, it is on balance fair that the abater should dispose if allowed to by the owner. The arborist is just the agent of the abater. His duties to chip, dump, transport etc are a secondary issue. Let's not get the two mixed up. Also it is I find very wise not to mix up everyday pragmatics like resolving disputes amicably with the legal position if it all goes horribly wrong. If it goes wrong the law will decide who is right based on the assumption of two hypothetical reasonable people. It follows that if a pragmatic non-confrontational person wants some light into their garden the arborist should be able to advise them of their rights and then exercise a different skill by suggesting or brokering a compromise solution. A few people on Arbtalk are making the mistake of assuming that because most situations are resolved without a fight on the day that the law is too strict, too old or just wrong. It's not. It's there as a fallback and a framework for reasonable behaviour and compromise. As I said about 10 pages back, this subject never gets resolved. Not for want of the clear and settled correct answers being readily available but because of confusion and possibly more than a little stubbornness amongst individuals who are prepared to state that they know the law better than the law does. It does our industry and our customers no favours.

No. If the neighbour has explicitly stated that you are not welcome for whatever purpose, I imagine they would have no difficulty getting an injunction to enforce their right to exclude you. Continued trespass would then be contempt of court. There are defences against actions of tort against trespass but none of them would apply here. Perhaps the best illustration is for the defence of 'necessity'. The word says it all; if the prunuing can be done with a scaffolding tower from within the nuisanced property, it is not 'necessary' but only desireable or cheaper to trespass by climbing the tree within the neighbour's boundary.

Mini-bump. Am still planning to do this when I get a moment. I had a 1 hour drive to a job yesterday and by the time I got there I had thought the whole thing through and it was crystal clear. Now I've forgotten what I realised. D'oh!

It's not that simple, yest there is a right to cut back to the boundary but it's how and when and with what regard to the risk that might be created for the tree owner that is the important refinement of the law. Or maybe you are not interested. Could get yourself or a customer in trouble some day. I should state it another way. Acting reasonably in relation to others is the law. What you can do within that in relation to trees is the refinement and does not replace it.

Nice try to clarify it, but I would take issue with a few things. Firstly BS3998 is not the law, but could be used in court as a measure of industry best practice if a dispute arose about whether the work had been done appropriately. There is no duty of care to prevent tree nuisance. Absolutely definitely not.

I hope he takes her to the cleaners...