daltontrees

The OP's second picture (of the bark) had flaky and smooth, a bit inconclusive and no scale to suggest how old the stem was. I don't know about menziesii hardiness either. A. unedo is a bit of a curiosity, definitely naturalised in UK and Ireland and does well apparently on the south western tip of Ireland. Dunno if menziesii would stand it. It's possibly the maritime influence and salt in the air that saves it from serious frost damage.

Wait, who are we saying is god, Mattheck or Shigo? And much as I am prepared to accept polytheism, I can't see Slater being much more than an altar boy so far. PS, any chance of getting a shot on that Gilman article after you've read it please?

Could equally be Arbutus menziesii, but it's much rarer.

Indeed, anything that makes me think hard is good. And what you refer to about Slater's fame is what I meant by gaining advantage. It's all very well getting better known, but I would rather be known for being constructive.

I think that's what I meant. That is to say, it would be appropriate to wait for the Council to direct you to replant rather than automatically replanting. That way they get to choose size, position and species.

No, it was just generalised cynicism. Forget it, I am just a bit of a grump sometimes and the Slater article always came across to me as not particularly constructive.

Regulation 14(2)(b). 5 days notice required by law. Unless it's dangerous , in which case notify them as soon as you can but get on with the removal. Replanting is not mandatory, it's up to the Council to specify it.

My cynical view is that we should be surprised not by what is in Pandora's Box but by how much truth is wilfully concealed by those who stand to gain advantage by the concealment.

I meant that YOU would have solved the riddle by Easter. Go for it, that's what I say. If you have an inquiring mid that imagines the way trees work at a cellular level, seeing them at a cellular level with the use of a microscope takes you right into that world. You don't need to be Alice in Wonderland to appreciate how liberating it can be to take a stroll amongst the xylem.

Rather beautifully put! In strictly Darwinian terms, we need not analyse CODIT too much. Trees get damaged but they survive because they have evolved mechanisms to cope with damage. Our species has evolved, on the other hand, to include the ability to overlook evidence in favour of... well I'm not yet sure. Disdain for other species seems quite high on the agenda, as does a curious mixture of intelligence and selective ignorance. As I am more than sure you know, we are part of nature and not some sort of self-appointed overseer of it.

It was just a guess. A bit too clustered to be D.c and blurry enough to be anything. What's your guess?

I rarely see D.q. The brackets are not flat at all, flat on top and bulging beneath so that you can see the maze gills from afar. I only know of it on Oak and I have only ever seen D.c on Willow and Alder.

It was such a nice specimen and I had my wife's new Nikon with me. Similar pattern on Daedalea quercina. Another easy name to remember if you know your Icarus and Daedalus fable and that Oak is Quercus.

I have the very thing here. I can't remember what it is, a thin section of a cross section of a broadleaf tree. Individual cells can clearly be seen. The magnification is 600x, so much so that even though the thin section is only about 1/200th of a millimetre I was unable to focus on the front and the back of the thin section at the same time. It looks blurry because you are seeing one side of the slide out of focus and the other in focus. The first picture is in Plane Polarised Light. The S1, S2 and S3 layers of the cell walls are visible. The second slide shows it in Cross Polarised Light. Sure enough, where there is nothing to rotate the light it looks black. But the cellulose in the cell walls, especially the shallow angled cellulose in S2, is diffracting the light so that it is getting through the second polariser. And if it had been infected with say K. deusta in soft rot mode, you would have been able to see a reduction in cellulose. Which is what I am trying to put across as the great benefits of microscopy with the advantage of Cross Polarised Light and a rotating stage. To be honest I don't see how anyone could get by without one!

OK I have found something suitable. A thin section of a piece of mica-rich granite, I think. In the middle is a crystal of Biotite, a mica. In a rock this looks jet black in reflected light. In thin section it is transparent and slightly yellow/green/brown. The picture is in Plane Polarised Light. The second picture is in Cross Polarised Light. No light should be getting through, but it is because every crystal is rotating the light. The biotite is no brightly coloured. The textureless grey stuff is quartz, all shades of grey depending on optic axis (never mind that bit). OK now I need to find pics of a tree section in Cross Polarised Light.

Another quick tutorial for anyone that's interested. This is a bit hardcore but is useful foundation understanding for anyone that wants to get into microscopy. So far I have referred to the two types of microscope being reflected and transmitted light. I am going to concentrate on transmitted light for now. That's basically looking at light passing through thin sections. But whadya know there is more than one kind of light. Every bit of light we receive is made up of zillions of photons, little bundles of light energy. Each one has a random orientation or plane. So say you were looking at a conventional wrist watch. One photon could be arriving in your eye in the 12 o'clock 6 o'clock plane. Another in the 2 o'clock 8 o'clock plane. Yet another in the 11.30 5.30 plane etc etc a million times over in absolutely every possible plane. The eye can't tell which plane each photon is in, it doesn't matter, it's all just light. But white light is made up of all the colours at once. Proof of this is that it can be split by a prism. Dig out a copy of Dark Side of the Moon by Pink Floyd, that's what's on the cover. When you look at white light through a microscope this is what you get. All colours and all orientations. This is called 'Bright Field'. There are times, though, when you might only want to get one colour of light. For this, microscopes can be fitted with colour filters. Easy. The next bit is a bit more complicated. Sometimes you only want light in one plane of orientation. I will explain why in a minute. Say you only want light in the 12 - 6 plane. This is what polarising filters do. They have a very very fine set of lines on them that only lets those photons through that are in the right plane of orientation. Like say if you stood over a road drain with slats on it and dropped a packet of uncooked spaghetti onto it in random orientations. Only the spaghetti that was in the same orientation as the grating would get through. The rest would bounce off. This is what a polarising filter is doing, only the photons in one plane are getting through. Looking at a slide in this light is called 'Plane Polarised'. With me so far? The polarising filter goes between the lamp and the slide so the slide is only getting polarised light through it. What would happen if you put another polarising filter over the slide at right angles to the first one. That's right, no light can get through. Like 2 drain covers. What one lets through the other catches. But that's not strictly true. Whatever is between them could be acting like a mini prism, in effect rotating the photons slightly. Thus a few make it through the second polariser because their plane of orientation is no longer at right angles to the second polariser. Doing this is called looking in 'Cross Polarised Light'. OK I am going to find a picture of a rock thin section to illustrate why this is useful.

This bit from my website might help you verify whether I have got it right and might help you remember it too. Home - Dalton Tree Solutions

Or morality with compulsion.

My, you're careful! That's an entirely appropriate caveat.

Based on height and tree species and what I can see from the photos, I'd guess at Daedalopsis confragrosa.

What I took from Wagon Mound 2 was that the fire on the harbour was a foreseeable consequence of causing the oil slick, and the engineer was to blame for the damage caused by the fire. But what I really meant by citing it is that the court said that all the engineer had to do to prevent the hazard was to close a valve. Therefore although it was a freakish accident that caused the damage it could have been very easily avoided at nil cost. If regular chimney sweeping could have prevented a chimney fire and if an obvious and entirely foreseeable consequence of a chimney fire was torching the neighbour's thatched roof, Wagon Mound 2 would have been on the side of the old lady.

That's 2!

It might be stretching a point to say that heartwood is even functional in the first place. Shigo's static apoplast and all that? PS I noted somewhere this morning that Shigo defines Decay in CODIT as the process of decay, not the substance. I am even more convinced that Dysfunction is not a better term. Sorry to disagree. But it's just semantics anyway.

Happy to help, PM me when you have lined up a victim. Stereo aint quite the right word, it suggests that you will be able to discern depth in the subject such that it looks three dimensional. The right word is probably binocular. Two identical eyepieces having the same view. Some find it easier on the eyes because you don't have to close one eye. There is also the option of a trinocular. These aren't cheap though. I'm not suggesting anyone has three eyes, what they are good for is keeping a camera or computer connection attached to one of them semi-permanently so that when you see something interesting you can instantly take a picture of it. I was going to get on to the subject of photographing through the microscope shortly. But basically if you have any microscope that has a 23mm or 30mm sleeve for the eyepiece, you have lots of options. Therefore don't get any instrument that doesn't have a slide-out detachable eyepiece. And if you get a microscope, I will give you a couple of tree slides that I have duplicates of. By then I should have posted how to make your own microtome and then your own slides. Then you can dissect some branch unions and make slides and solve the riddle once and for all. Should have it wrapped up by Easter. You weren't doing anything else, were you?

Sorry, here's the attachment. KTSmithletter7Feb11.pdf