daltontrees

Well, there you go, I'll let my client know. It's still pretty amazing that a fruiting body can develop through such a tiny crack.

I should have looked a bit closer but doing so would have necessitated breaking the cluster open, they looked like they were having a hard enough time as it was. Besides, it was intermittently lashing with rain and gusting about 50mph. I was keen to get my new Nikon out of the salty air asap. That 'driftwood' was a whole trunk about 5m long and 60cm diameter, hollow at the base and I am guessing a K. deusta failure. The fungi were therefore on a part of the tree that would have been at about 5m up. But now growing horizontally on the 'driftwood' in its new position lodged in (no, on!) a sand dune. The force that must have carried it there is unthinkable. If its hitchhikers survived the ride they could survive anything.

Another odd place for fungus, or it seemed odd when I saw it 2 days ago (2nd January). It was on a lump of wood on a windswept beach, 10 metres from the water's edge, soaked with seaspray, draped with seaweed and caked with sand. And still seemed to be struggling on.

I feel drawn now to the Prunus avium camp, or Prunus anyway. Those lenticel bands are so pronounced. I am sure that Aspen's bands tend towards lines of black diamonds which in time can end up as vertical ridging. Also no Aspen leaves in the picture.

You said something about the other trees in the area all being Beech and something else. If you look in the leaf litter at the base of the tree for any leaf forms that aren't from species that you know, it will narrow it down. Aspen leaves are so distinctive that if there is only one of this tree in the area and you find Aspen leaves nearby I'd say you've got most of the evidence you need to confirm it's Aspen. Also if there are any recent wind breakages lying around that look like they came off this tree, have a look at the buds. Some guide books describe the buds as 'painfully sharp' or words to that effect. Stick one into your thumb pad and you'll soon know.

Three things occur to me. Firstly, and as seems to be the case, the fungi seem to be a recurrence of annual fruiting which would mean the tree was already in poor health before the development was commenced. It may be impossible to prove that any subsequent failure of the tree is due to root damage. It might have failed eventually anyway or become so unsightly or dangerous that is removal by its owner would have been required and would not have been resisted by the Council or could have been done under exemption. I get the feeling that proof of tree loss due to the developer's actions without very substantial and expert arboricultural input (at considerable expense) would be beyond the ability of the OP even with the help of all the advice given in this Forum. Secondly it is worth considering as it always is that the Council could be watching this post unofficially and gleaning tactical advantage. Thirdly, my instinct as a citizen is that there is something not quite right here with the Council closing its file. A freedom of information request may or may not yield additional evidence, but in my experience of being on the receiving end of requests when in Local Government and of putting them in on my own behalf the crucial thing is to get the question right. Asking for all the information and correspondence the Council has about the tree and the land could result legitimately in a rejection of the request or a charge being made (legitimately) for information that turns out to be of no use. Frame the request carefully and dispassionately. You do NOT have to say why you want the information and the Council is NOT allowed to ask.

Fair play! Relatively rare though. And oddly mostly up north. Anyway I am slightly envious of some of the finds on Arbtalk, the range up here seems to be genuinely smaller and the finds less frequent. Maybe I am looking in the wrong sorts of woods for the softy Ganoderma. Most of those carnosum were on Douglas Fir, which I rarely see in the city.

Priceless! I am off to chortle about that while I make the dinner. At least you got an answer... No doubt I will bore the ether with my thoughts on it in due course.

Hello, did you ever get anything back? Even a fob-off?

I have just got round to noticing this and looking at it. I am afraid to say that it seems to take itself round in ever decreasing circles and then cops out by suggesting trees be valued by Helliwell, CAVAT or another average value technique. I admire the passion and frustration of the arguments that parks are undervalued, but when CABE tries to equate 'undervalued' as in not appreciated and funded enough with 'undervalued' as in aren't treated properly in accounting terms, it loses its way. What did you think of it? Anyone else?

Fair enough. We don't get to see these soft southern ganoderma up here. I would be interested to know whether based on teh smattering of info and the couple of photos your guess would be whether this outbreak is in its first year or recurrence of a well established annual fruiting?.

I just noticed that you have symbols for subsidence potential. It's not clear what these amount to but it has flagged up that another useful snippet of information for each species would be its NHBC water demand category.

This would be a fabulous resource. With no regard to how much work would be required to gather the info, I would ideally like to see wood type (ring or diffuse porous), frost hardiness (in zones), sexuality (dioecious/monoecious), deciduous/semi-evergreen/evergreen (at the very top of the page), family/genus and species (at the top again). Then I can chuck out all my books and just use Wiki.

Luma apiculata?

Fairly random picture of mine from one of my slides, can't remember what it is, not woody but showing what can be achieved with a half-decent microscope (the one pictured in my previous post) and a camera held to the eyepiece.

Schweingruber is the man, although I wouldn't fancy having his surname and it translated into english. I had great plans over Christmas to fill this thread up with useful and inspiring stuff, but it never happened. It's surprising how lists of things to do expand to fill and exceed available time a.k.a. the Schweingruber paradox. For teh meantime here's another bit of explanation about microscopes. Last thing I mentioned was the difference between reflected light and transmitted light microscopy. Reflected light just means looking at things very very close up using light bouncing off them. Transmitted light means looking through things, usually cut so thin that even something like wood will let some light pass through it. Here's one of my transmitted light microscopes. It is a fancy one for looking at rock thin sections (yes, if you slice rocks thinly enough you can see through them, honestly!). but all,the basics are there for looking at plants in transmitted light. i.e. (i) a built-in light source at the bottom, mains powered (older microscopes may have a pivoting mirror instead so you can use house lights or a window as a light source) (b) a condenser that concentrates the light upwards through a hole in the © stage on which the slide is put and held in place by spring clamps (d) an objective lens that is very powerful in gatering light from a tiny field of view very close to the slide (this microscope has 4 objectives that can be swivelled into place according to how much magnification you want) (e) a focusing knob that moves the stage up and down to get the slide in focus and (f) an eyepiece lens that makes the image suitable for viewing by the human eye and also magnifies the image and additional 10 times (this one has 2 eyepieces, the equivalent of binoculars instead of a telescope). Thgis one cost about £400 new but it has many features you wouldn't need on a biological microscope. Anyone could pick up a cheap second hand student microscope on eBay for £40 that would more than do the job.

My thoughts exactly. If I was the neighbour I would certainly have considered a High Hedges notice. Which by the way according to Government guidance can take into account the 'risk of major cutting destroying the hedge' by allowing for say 3 years' phased cutting.

I agree, risk only needs to be managed to an acceptable level. Any system that emphasises target will in my experience go a long way to avoiding unnecessary inspections. I'm not necessarily advocating quantitative, a low/medium/high target presence is often enough but it can definitely be combined with a minimum DBH cut-off to further avoid unnecessary inspections.

I shouldn't have been so imprecise with my choice of words. M/C doesn't say size, it says severity of harm. Which QTRA equates to size, an obvious limitation for the reasons you indicate and for other reasons I can think of.

It's interesting to see, when all is said and done about qualitative and quantitative risk assessment, how it manifests itself in practice. I am curious though on one point. Dredging up the old Matheny/Clark concept of risk = target x size x likelihood of failure, that is generally accepted, you are prioritising the inspection of high target sites and then acting on trees there with let us call it imminent need for intervention, thus dealing with 2 of the 3 M/C measures. How do you factor in size, the third factor? Is it built in to the 'deemed as required' aspect of the decision making? Or do you have a size cut-off so that smaller trees are consigned to a lower priority for inspection (if ever)?

I came across one last month, the whole heddge had been topped and trimmed too much and it had just given up. Every single one of the 20 trees had died, no other explanation. If you think of Leylandii as trees (it's hard, I know) then in theory the old BS3998 rule of thumb of not removing more than 30% is just as valid as with any other tree. But when does that ever happen? My suggestion would be that bushing out and risk of killing the trees will be greatly reduced by taking 1/4 or 1/3 rd of the height off this year, another proportion off next year and then in the third year cut it to the final height. As soon as you top Leylandii they bush out then the top remaining branches curve up to give multiple leaders. If you reduce inm stages you can manage the strlong lower laterals better or else you will end up with a hedge 4m high and 8m wide and eventually no garden.

I think I have seen that article cited elsewhere, I'll download it and have a look. Having worked in Local Government in the recent past at a fairly senior level, I can tell even before I look a the article that it was probably sickeningly difficult to get Councillors to sign up to anything that creates revenue or capital budgetary requirements and doesn't immediately win votes.

You'd better get cracking then. Or copy theirs and change a few bits... I wonder how many LAs have tree strategies and how many of those reference and take on board TIT2?

Attached is exerpt from london tree strategy doc that might help confirm it was 'woodlands' london-tree-strategy-guidance-draft.pdf

There was definitely a category called 'Local Authority Woodland' but I don't know if it was a subcategory of Open Spaces