daltontrees

Someone please look it up and then put it on the forum here that you're all partly right and partly wrong. It's undsettling that several professionals froem the industry are willing to state such differing and contradictory versions of the law on a public forum. Bad for the reputation of the 'profession' if nothing else. This subject comes up regularly and never gets resolved. And I'd use ascaffolding tower if I had to. Only the OP and the arborist have seen the site. If I couldn't get at least 2 anchor positions of at least 50mm diameter that were entirely in the client's airspace, including one suitable for descent on a rope and cambium saver, I'd use a tower. You can hire them by the hour for buttons. No pole pruner in the world is going to let you do good quality cuts from the ground. The neighbour has said no trespass, that means no trespass. Why recommend a rope-and-harness solution that can't be implemented?

Not one to be shock-loading in a dismantle. Main anchor for climber in adjacent tree, methinks.

I meant to add, I seem to have a suitabler dod of wood outside that needs carved a la Shigo, to illustrate a point. Will wait till teh neighbours are out. 114dB of Husq harmonia is rarely welcome in victorian suburbia.

I don't think I can explain it but I will soon post a synopsis of the explanations of the big thinkers on the subject.

Well'I am hoping to cite Shigo (and Thomas, I think) on this sort of thing soon. Right after the wean has gone to bed, I have cooked and had my dinner, downloaded my survey data from today, sadi hello to wife, watched the Mentalist (my one guilty pleasure). I may be gone for some time...

Ahhh, Jaysus, me head's started spinning again...

I'm interested too. I have been looking into this for almost an hour and the answer is both simple and very complicated. I have made a page of notes that I need to distill into a concise form. Basically not all asymmetrical growth is due to gravity, not all adaptive growth is triggered by gravity and not all wood arising from adaptive growth is reaction wood. Got that? No, me neither. But I almost have. Gimme another day...

Wait till my head stops spinning and I will try and get to the bottom of it. I aint trying to define reaction wood, just trying to clarify what the accepted definiton is from reliable sources...

I'm not sure if I understand what you don't unbderstand. You seem to have covered it quite well there. But the concept of 'defence' is a bit anthropomorphic, trees don't think, they react in a relatively simple physiological way. Hence my re-assertion that trees are self-optimising structures, and that describing 'any tree branch coming out from the trunk will have unequal growth rings in response to gravity' as anything other than normal and implicit in the definition of trees is a nonsense. So I suppose I think that the defintion of reaction wood is that it is the wood of special characteristics that reflect the tree's reaction to abnormal circumstances that differ from a tree's progressive and norma self-optimisation.

I don't need dear to help me, I am well able to do it myself. And can you please moderate your language? It seems to have passed from banter to insult.

You believe that is true, I don't. That proves that there is no such thing as truth, only personal conviction and collective conviction. There is in my view a greater danger in pretending there is universal truth than in realising that there isn't and using the knowledge wisely.

I did the subject to death in the aforementioned thread. Basically reactive wood is a made-up term, the true term is reaction wood. All wood is reactive. Not all wood is a reaction to something. If a tree is slowly tilting as the soil it is growing in is sliding slowly down the hill, and the tree puts on extra and adapted wood on the tension or compression side, that's reaction wood. Ity is reacting to something other thna the normal forces associated with getting bigger and standing up to nedemic weather and wind conditions. If it puts on extra wood around a decaying wound that strengthens the zone as a reaction to its weakening because of the decay, that's a reaction. Opinions differ on teh definition, but you will get nowhere trying to understand the phenomenon if you call it reactive wood. It's reaction wood, it's a reaction to something, according to the accepted rules of grammar and syntax. I woudl add as a reminder to the earlier other thread that reaction wood has specia characteristics, it is not just extra wood, which could more generally be called adaptive growth wood.

Thanks. You may be aware then that after 2 world wars the allies in Europe would probably have lost to the axis powers unless it had been for teh intervention of other coutries like USA and Canada, with troops, supplies, munitions and finances. EDurope was in tatters after the second world war. The US Marshall Plan provided finance and help (putting europe in hock to teh USA for decades afterwards, but beggars can't be choosers). Quoting from Wikipedia "The goals of the United States were to rebuild war-devastated regions, remove trade barriers, modernize industry, and make Europe prosperous again. The underlying objective form a US selfish perspective in it's self-appointed role as moral judge, jury ad executioner of the world, was to stabilise europe and so prevent the spread of communism. It worked. Suggesting UK made a mistake in joining is with the benefit of hindsight not that plausible. It had little or no choice in the matter. One could probably argue that if it had come out of the war as badly as Gerany, it would have modernised out of necessity a lot more and would have put itself on a sound competitive footing with the rest of teh world. But instead two world wars gave temporary reprieve to the inevitable decline of heavy industry and Britain didn't have to reinvent itself at the same time as everrywhere else, remaining dependent and complacent on heavy industry so that when that ended there was and is very little to fall back on in secondary (or even primary) industries. We are still heavily dependent on service industries, meaning we try to make a living by trading and being clever, and we have to import more than we can export. Tampering with solid trading links is a risky stategy because we can't afford (literally) to get it wrong. Europe-bashing is all the rage just now. It is far too easy to forget the good things that came fromand still come from europe, and getting a balanced view on this just now is difficult. Hiowever, I have in the past been personally involved in projects which received 10s of millions of £s from Europe without which the urban areas I was working in would be ghost towns. Bash away, all of you, but please make an informed decision. The greatest wisdom I have acquired is tha tther eis no such thing as black or white, no such thing as right or wrong, no such thing as truth. Everything is in shades or cannot be known. Anyone who is at either extreme end of the spectrum hasn't in my opinion, thought it through. It is a finely balanced judgement to stay in or get out. Personally I think it's crazy, but I only have one vote.

Before I answer that, can you please confirm if you are a US citizen and what your experiences are of living in UK and/or Europe? I'm not trying to trap you into anything here, I am just wantig to establish context for a suitably tailored reply.

OK, the first things that come to my mind about short-term difficulties that will arise and may become permanent. 1. Plant Health - our domestic legislation arises from European Conventions, in other words a Europe-wide co-ordinates attempt to control the spread of pests adn diseases. Wave bye-bye to that and say hello to Emerald Ash Borer, Asian Longhorn etc. I expect our national assets (woodlands and forests) would be at a higher risk of being wiped off the UK balance sheet. 2. Import and export of plants will definitely become more difficult and therefore probably more expensive because there will no longer be a common labelling standard. 3. European partners with any one of 30 nearby countries to choose to trade with in timber and the like could shun the UK for any reason whatsoever (including the above issues), whereas the UK doesn't have that option to shun its trading partners. An uneven playing field leads to competitive advantages for Europe and disadvantages for UK. 4. No-one in this country will be able to go and work in Europe. 5. UK business will be excluded from bidding on large OJEU contracts. 6. Climbing gear that is CE certified may not be usable in this country if it cannot be LOLERed ar LOLER exempt, we will have to return to a set of redundant BSs, meaning products (ropes, harnesses) may only be purchasable from within UK. 7. European governments and the Commission will (and I mean will) go out of its way to make trading with UK more difficult. If you think they're difficult just now, wait till they have a good reason. 8. International companies may choose to relocate to mainland europe, for some of the reasons that they have declared their intention to get out of Scotlnadn if it goes independent. Why make trucks here if you can't bring in mobile labour and CE certified parts when you need to. They can still sell to Britain but may not buy labour and goods. Bang goes the main hope Britain has to close its trade deficit. I didn't say we couldn't trade with Europe or survive without membershi of it, but it would eb folly to assume it wouldn't be more difficult. A UK government will find bureaucracy to fill the void left by Europe. It always does. Every new government that comes in promises to have a bonfire of quangos and to rid the state of deadwood, and everyone fails partly and replaces what it removed under a different name because it realises that it was there because it was somehow needed. The british are whingers, have a listen to Jeremy Vine or read the Daily Mail any day. That's where rules and bureaucracy comes from. From within. It won't go a way and if it does you will want it back because anything else is a license for cowboy contractors, makers and sellers of faulty chainsaws and tax dodgers.

Sorry to be so blunt but anyone thinks it will be just as easy to trade with Europe from outside Europe is living in cloudcuckooland. Better to stay in and change it than get out. This subject hass been raised before, by me in the scottish independence thread. BAsically if this thread's poll is any indication of UK intention we will be out of Europe within a couple of years, and so will Scotland if it doesn't get independence because no matter how Scotland viotes in a Euro referendum its influence will be lost in the English based vote. So I'm not only pro-European but I am now back to voting for Scotland to be independent so that we are not screwed by England dragging UK out of Europe.

All very well for non-shockloaded situations your sailor buddy's idea, but tehre's a reason or two why it's not done that way in tree work. You can't pre-tighten the connection with his method, but that's exactly what happens with timber hitch. Plus with a bit of practice, on small stuff like in the vid you could with a bit of practice tie a timber hitch in less time, and when your fingers are cold you won't have to fiddle with screwgates of tri-locks. And when you get to bigger stuff, you'll only try the sailor method until you get a piece slide out of the 'hitch'. Then if you and the groundy have escaped injury, you'll probably just get a sling or take notches out and use a timber hitch. Work on your hitches, I say. Tie them loose and tighten them once they are tied. Don't fanny about trying to tuck ropes through an already half-tightened hitch. With a heavy enough stopper knot you can just about flip a timber hitch with one hand then pull it tight.

Cold well be a Populus, perhaps a trichocarpa although would expect the leaves to be distinctly downy and lighter underneath for a month or two after flushing.

Interesting guess. SHoots are usually green though. This is flushing red. Could be an ornamental variety of just about any of the Acer. It is getting complicated in my mind as many of them flush the flowers fiirst, then leaves a few weeks later and most of the flowers on Acer are green or yellow.

Opposite buds do suggest Acer. Upward sweeping tips suggest saccharinum.

The Act says you have to have served notice and got consent or have waited 6 weeks. The wording of the Act suggests the notice should be formal and should at least be dated. If I was you I'd state everything you know, as many dates and names as you can remember, in writing to Planning. Then wait a coupel of days and phone up and see if it can all be dropped. You don't want it on your record even if it is wrong.

The americans are almost certainly using iTree, with as Sloth has suggested the 'eco' module. Whilst it is quite sophisticated, the values are ultimately arbitrary. There is a fundamental difficulty in equating monetary value with ecological or amenity value, and an even bigger difficulty in setting public funding policy for tree management against asset values. Send me a private message if you want to know ore about my recent expriences on doing the iTree eco survey for Glasgow. Also have a look at the valuation thread in Arbtalk which I started maybe 6 months ago and which gives you a flavour of some of the complexities and also a hint at the lack of interest in getting tree valuation onto a meaningful credible footing. I plan to revisit the thread sometime soon but I am fairly sure there is no real appetite ofr the subject her on Arbtalk, if anywhere... That's niot to say you shouldn't give it a go. You will have a long and challenging amd perhaps fulfilling journey ahead of you, and one that would eb very fruitful as part of formal arboriculture study as it touches on many areas and bumps you up against public policy. With your forehead mostly.

Iteresting... the forewood forum 2 days ago concluded it was Alder. Personally I suspect it's Populus tremula.

I see whaty you are getting at but the tests to be applied to such situations are so clearly set out in legislation that it would be very very hard to build a case solely around reliance on the TO's advice. And the TO is there not to advise on what the owner should do but what he believes the Council's position would be in the event of a 5 day notice or an application. That might sound like advice but it's what the TO would advise the Council to do not what the owner shoudl do to discharge the duty of care within the satutory rules.

That can't be the case, surely? That would put LAs in an almost impossible position. I'll hava alook at the new Regulations.