daltontrees

Hello, I think you are right to worry about the reduced rope radius on this thing. I have tsame type of fixing on my swedish strop nad it has a metal thimble. Sloth's suggestion of a thimble is a decent idea, but the nylon ones won't last too long. Be careful if you are using one of those lumps of metal as a throw weight. One of them swinging back towards you after going over a branch will be pretty scary, teeth-breaking potential very high. I know because I regularly get a bash off the swedish throwing it round the back of a stem. Perhaps you could consider a maillon to join rope spliced eye to the device? Remember to inspect regularly to make sure the nut on the maillon is tight, possibly even glue it shut with epoxy resin glu or spot-weld it shut.

New Songdo City South Korea (Seoul)

Seoul?

I have had the same discussion with developer clients. I have to caution them that the fines are in theory unlimited and can be linked to the value the tree removal adds to the value of the property. See for example Poole v Dorset, or is it Dorset v Poole? Somewhere down that direction anyway. And they have to replant if so directed. So the loss of public amenity is temporary and deferred.

Well, we live in an age where morality and business are mutually exclusive. The developer hasn't broken any laws though, has he? It is for the LA to foresee tree loss, assesswhether the trees contribute to the amenity of the area and if so consider TPOing them if it's expedient. All very well in theory and in law but if they go around TPOing trees where there is no threat of loss they are criticised. Personally I'd like to see the 'expedient' test given its widest possible interpretation so that LAs can literally go round their area and spot all the trees that are important for amenity and TPO them regardless of any real or perceived threats to the trees. The question of whether the trees should be preserved for the amenity of the development is much more difficult because the people to whom the amenity will be provided don't yet live in the houses that haven't yet been built. Or, often, designed. 5837 says the survey should disregard development anyway. Were the removed trees on this site visible to the public?

I knew I'd seen it somewhere! Conversion of Phenylalanine to Benzaldehyde Initiated by an Aminotransferase in Lactobacillus plantarum Concentration of benzaldehyde in the fungus seems to me more likely than production of it by the fungus.

There may be a point. The situation is a bit more complicated with Council-owned land. Councils are encouraged not to TPO their own land, but legally they can. But in cash-strapped times it is not unheard of for Councils to compromise their own planning policies by allowing development on land they are selling that otherwise they would resist or control tightly. In the end less conditions means more capital receipt. I am maybe being too cynical, Councils can sell land with conditions attached that are more enforceable than planning conditions. They can also sell land subject to a development brief that can specify from the outset that a formal Planning Agreement will be put in place. This is like very firm planning conditions but in a deed that is recorded and runs with the land and which is more enforcable than planning conditions. Maybe that's what is proposed. Maybe the right thing to ask the Council is what measures have been put in place, and are proposed, to make sure that no trees are lost prior to planning applications, to make sure that trees are properly taken into account as part of the site design process and to protect trees during and after construction. And copy it to your local councillor(s) and MP.

Or there's this... [ame=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rXElBhPX05k]coconut tree climbing - YouTube[/ame]

BS3998 cautions against the misuse of spikes for avoiding danage from tree work operations. If your client' consent makes reference to BS3998 being followed, you shouldn't use spikes. In my personal view you shouldn't anyway, but that's a matter of personal standards and reputation. If I saw someone spiking up a lime to do pruning, I'd make a mental note never to use him on any of my jobs. And if I was rth Tree Officer reinspecting afterth job is done and I saw the stems riddled with gouges I'd be on my guard every time the contractor's name was raised in connection with an application for consent. There's always another way to get up there. It might take longer, it might cost more, it might involve slightly higher risk (but still tolerable), but there's always another way.

The only way I can think of that doesn't require testing a proportion of them to destruction is to use an increment borer and a Fractometer (Mk3).

Looks like a lot of Cs in the original survey. A developer could take that as some sort of justification for preliminary removal?

Cheers. I'm off now to try and make a microtome out of nuts bolts and washers. Then if that works I'll make a thin section slide. For anyone that doesn't know, a microtome is a machine that holds a sample (like a twig or a leaf or a bud) while you take very very thin see-through slices off it.

PM sent but please check as I migh somehow have fired it off to the Rosetta satellite instead by accident.

It would be good to see them here. Was the fish pun intended?

Tree surgeon is in the dictionary, "a person who prunes and treats old or damaged trees in order to preserve them". A lot of the time what people in the business do to trees has nothing to do with preserving them. I would call them tree workers/cutters. Arborist isn't in the same dictionary. I have always taken it to be an aerial tree worker, basically a lumberjack with a rope. In America. Conversely arboriculture is in the dictionary as "the cultivation of trees and shrubs". IN BS5837 it has a formal meaning something like 'someone who through relevant training, sducation and experience has gained expertise of trees in relation to buildings' Seems to me they're all pretty vague terms but if you're dismantling a tree or felling it that aint tree surgery. And swinging about on a rope with a chainsaw doesn't make you an arboriculturist unless you're the one that also made the strategic and informed decisions about why the work is being done, where and how. It's probably just me then, but I think a lot of the time tree surgeon sounds pretentious and misleading. There's some right cowboys around calling them tree surgeons and committing atrocities to trees from a safe position of reflected glory and public confusion that tree 'surgeons' are somehow surgeons. In what other business can you buy a saw and a rope and start a business with a moniker that suggests 5 years at university and 10 years of experience? Sometimes I think of myself as a boy in a man's body who is delighted at being paid to climb trees, mess about with machinery and destroy things, all of which I wuld probably do for nothing if I was allowed to or could get away with it. Don't know if there is a word for that, though?

I am curious to know what this is. The smell of almonds is bezaldehyde. I think many fungi (and plants, notably Prunus) produce it as an insecticide. But both benzaldehyde and hydrogen cyanide are bi-products of the fermentation or breakdown of phenylalanine, a common plant and fungus protein. The smell could be from concentrations of these in the fungus but with the original source being the tree. I could be talking mince, though. I would have been tempted to take the bracket in context to be Perenniporia fraxinea.

Wild guess is Phellinus ignarius in its first year.

Sorry again I have been up north once again and working so hard I have been falling asleep every evening before getting to the 'puter. I will send you my address just now. I have outlined the benefits of a polarising microscope, but it's far from essential. As well as the ability to look at cellulose concentration ad degradation (a very rare requirement except for academic interest) the polarising microscopes are among the few ones that have rotating stages, and I find that feature useful.

What are we looking at in the second picture? Was it inside the cavity? Is it shrapnel?

Not much sun to be seen, but here's a silhouette of my mum's Wellies.

What qualifications do you have, my recommendations and suggestions would depend on your response?

So get one, and we can all compare notes...

Please, please please post to me, as I would very much like to experiment with fixing before spring and bud burst. I will send some spare slides in return. Will sne d private message. Sorry I have been off line for a couple of days as I have been up north.

Maybe see if you can download teh manual for it and chek what it's meant to run on. Most chaisaws, and all the ones I've had, are 1:50. It might be tempting to err ont eh safe side and use 1:25 but that can be bad for the carb and the timing (I've been told) if it really needs 1:50. Also better to use chainsaw 2 stroke oil, it's designed for faster revving of saws (18,000 rpm) than lawenmowers (?3,000 rpm).

Three different situations being discussed here already, the one in the Mail which involves landlord and tenant law, the company car next door and your own TPO'd tree. Which are you most interested in?