daltontrees

I don't think you need a court to say what's a nuisance if both parteis have agreed it is. But if you cut roots to get trid of nuisance, be prepared to defend yourself against prosecution for wilful damage to or wilful destruction of tree by Council. If you have evidence particularly photos you shoudl be OK. I stick by my suggestion of telling Council about proposed root pruning and asking to remove the destabilised tree.

This seems right in principle except as I have suggested if you ask for advice but don't apply formally there is nothing to refuse. And if the tree is TPO'd a refusal makes no difference to the owner's situation.

Are the roots a (legal) nuisance? Soulds like it. Is consent needed to abate the nuisance? No. So if you ask teh Council, thye can help and advise but ultimately you have the right to chop the roots whatever they say. A good fallback. But if chopping that many roots would cause the tree to fall over, theyir removal would (but for the abatement of nuisance immunity form prosecution) constitute wilful destruction of a protected tree. Perhaps what would have to be done is to tell the Council the roots are to be removed and then ask for consent to remove the remaining destabilised tree. Refusal of the latter would leave the Council resoonsible for compensation for foreseeable failure of the destabilised tree. It wpoul; seem the life of the tree is in the hands of the neighbour. Say the root chopping and then the tree removal will cost c + r, and if the overall effect is to change the amenity value of the tree owner's house by v1 you have a total worst-case cost for the tree owner's side. The neighbour might be concerned only about the effect on value on his house v2. Retention of the tree and its roots might be costly using a barrier system but if it costs b and b is less than c + r +/- v1 it is worth it for the owner. The neighbour may be in favour of this solution if v2 is a small or negative number. Who knows, if v2 is a large negative number the neighbour might chip in for the cost b. Sorry, that probably seems a bit complicated but that's how I would describe it to a client, but with a bit of hand waving and pointing. The barrier protection shouldn't need consent.

No. 12, a tricky one.

No. 11 buds (may be starting to burst) and old leaf only.

Collectively, you're just about there. 7. Tsuga mertensiana (Mountain Hemlock, high altitude replacement of T. heterophylla) 8. Wollemia nobilis 9. Abies concolor was a good shout but the needles are even bigger than that it's Abies bracteata. 10. Unmistakably Pseudotsuga menziesii (Douglas Fir)

I love the dog lead idea. I was going to try something similar a year ago but I bought a super cheapo dog lead that didn't even last an hour. Idea binned and forgotten about. A bit of rope does the same job but doesn't disappear into a casing when not in use. I would add that a small swing-cheek pulley on the lowering rope rather than a krab is a great improvement.

See my earlier post and Rupe's reply. A friction hitch on a standard climbing line is pretty jumpy with a rescued bod hanging on it. ZZ can't be much worse.

No. 10

No. 9, good luck. Not as vague as it might at first appear.

No. 8, a bit vague but please note the coin in the photo is a 10p so these needles are pretty big.

I am nominating the single elongating bud picture posted earlier this week in lieu of the missing no. 5. As ever, it is a screamingly obvious one to indentify if yoyu saw the whole tree. even so I got it within 10 metres based on just a couple of features that you can see in the picture. C'mon, put aside '100 leaves' and just look at it!

Dammit, you're good! 1. 'Camperdownii', gotta be with that weeping form. 2. P. strobus, as you say bark is distinctive 3. P. breweriana as already confirmed 4. N. menziesii for sure 5. Where IS it? I will post one shortly. 6. Cunninghamia lanceolata, check. 7. Nearly full marks up till this one but not even the right Genus. The Genus isn't obscure, the species is. I will give you a clue, if the picture of the whole tree had included the leader you might have got the Genus right away.

I just meant that if you calculate the actual RoH as 1:975,000 and rounded this to 1 significant figure you would get 1:1,000,000 and no action is required, but if you used the actual figure you are above the 1:1,000,000 threshold and action may be required. The consequences are probably trivial, I am just exploring the perception of some people that QTRA can have false precision and therefore whether this can result in false accuracy. The word 'ignored' was used by me in the mathematical sense, i.e. the treatment as insignificant of the smaller order digits in a rounded number. I am happy to leave the debate about precision there.

Donoghue v Stevenson (the snail in the ginger beer) case I remember as being ground-breaking, but Leakey seems a bit more rigorous because it relates (i) to heritable property and (ii) covers damage AND injury and (iii) allows for shades of grey in duty of care rather than black and white and (iv) clarifies that things originating on land but causing injury or damage on or to neighbouring land are included in the duty of care. I think it illustrates QTRA and ALARP principles better than Donoghue for those reasons, but that is just a personal view. Regarding Occupiers Liability Acts, the scottish Act 1960 is clearest of all but I think the english 57 and 84 Acts need a bit of thought before you can quite so readily conclude that together they are aligned to the wider common law (which of course they partly replaced). The differences are small and don't seem substantive, quirks of history rather than variations of intention. So, all is well there I hope. I for one need no further discussion on it.

No. 7, this one's (I think) really hard, I couldn't get it with the whole tree in front of me.

Will tell you what I think tomorrow.

Just going to give others a chance to have a go before saying.

No. 6. this one had no lable but I think it's not too obscure.

Here's a cracker (No. 4). Genus is easy enough, it's the species that is the challenge.

No. 3 is indeed Picea breweriana. Brewer's droop!

Honey Fungus doesn't always produce fruiting bodies, and as far as I can tell may only produce them when it has pretty much finished off its host. It could have decayed roots or killed the cambium enought to have cut off supply of nutrients to roots, causing them to die back and/or lose strength. Either way, rootplate movement like you describe would be enough to have me take the tree down regardless of what's wrong with it. A healthy birch should whip around in a strong wind, not teeter at the base. If you do take it down, any chance of examining the base a bit closer and letting us know what you find? In particular, maybe try prising off the bark close to the spots and see what's under there, like bootlaces or white sheets of mycelia.

Just going to leave it for a day or so to se eif anyone else wants a shot. And where's Rob Arb? I thought he'd be all over these like Dothistroma.

I think there is chat elsewhere on the forum about a system that is being developed to recognise qualifications better. Meantime the stickers are really just a gimmick, as someone said the whole team should be qualified appropriately but if one guy has one ticket the whole squad can stand behind the sticker. Just be good at what you have been taught and the rewards will come. The chancers may or may not get caught, hurt themselves or someone else, find they aren't insured when the appretice screws up etc. but lack of enforcmen tin the industry is something you just have to get used to like you do when you see the ladder-and-bow-saw merchants fly tipping in a farmer's field.

Another one (no.3) for practice.