daltontrees

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

No-one yet has asked what kind of conifers they are, so let me be the foirst. What kind of conifers are they? Don't need a definite ID, just a general ID like Spruce, Pine, Fir, Cedar, Cypress, Larch, Hemlock etc. What's right in the circumstances could eb dictated by the type of trees.

Although the original poster seems to have lost interest here, I haven't and I'm just wondering whether if those brackets are indeed Ganoderma, a genus known for persistent annual brackets, and those brackets look brand new, might we say that the Ganoderma fruiting has co-incided with the root severance and ground level changes? And might we expect a correlation between these occorrences?

I have been asking thei s question of planners for two decades, they mostly change the subject. My efforts to find an answer myself have neen inconclusive. But hey, if the penalty for white lies in the application is less than the penalty for wilful damage, the cost-conscious chancer will always go for the former.

Genius!

No chance! If you think my approach is dry, his is £500 an hour to-the-point and I suspect he is only mildly tolerant of the sort of frivolity that wafts through Arbtalk daily. Like a breath of fresh air, I would add!

It mught be useful to keep this thread for teh generalities and the other thread for the specific case. The latter is a good example of how not to do things and how things go wrong and possibly cannot be corrected if the right procedures are not followed by one or more party. This thread is already drawing out (for me anyway) some useful guidance on best practice and where one stands if one does it right. I suppose my original question is prodding at whether the system works even when it is used to the full. It has even been suggested that the legislation should be changed.

Including, of course Dr Mynors, who makes occasional but invariably high quality contributions to debates. However, UKTC debate is fragmented and hard to follow and review as it comprises a series of emails. Not a patch on Arbtalk for ease of following.

I am sure this has been debated before, but inconclusively. The dictionary in my head and the one on my shelf both suggest lopping to be of branches. I would never advise a client to rely on this lopping exemption as a mandate to cut/sever roots. We could disagree about definitions all day, it might only be when it gets to court that a judge will arbitrate on what the common language of the people means. Maybe I am just too common.