daltontrees

Sorry, here it is

Here's the foliage, what do you think now?

OK then, here's an easyish one. Fruit and structure first, as the foliage is a bit of a giveaway. I would add, this is a bit of a poor specimen in terms of foliage density but I took the pictures of this one because of the enormous pod.

I have witnessed this type of thing happening locally, an extension to a nursing home 3 years ago did not directly affect about 40 trees to the front of it but the developer spread excavations and topsoil scrapings around the base of the trees to get rid of the stuff, and compacted it. Within a year about 20 sycamore, ash and limes were all but dead, they then lost limbs in gales the year after and have been now reduced to 4m habitat poles. The effect of the burial was immediate, dramatic, observable and ultimately fatal. Furthermore, and it is a different matter I know, it was foreseeable and the trees should have been protected by the Council through planning conditions. Over 20 mature and mid aged trees lost to current and future generations by collective apathy or ignorance. I will try and get a picture of it for you, it is a sad sad scene and memorial to intransigence. Sounds like you have a similar situation on your hands. In these heavy rains the roots might already have been drowned (and root tissue killed) by newly elevated ground water levels and void-filling by leached particles and compaction. It would be nice to think the damage could be undone by re-excavation but...

Right common name, but I was going on basis of A. heterophylla. It may be a synonym. For someone in Oldham you know your subtropicals! It must be balmy there, maybe I shall holiday there next winter instead of Lanzarote. Another useful scientific name, meaning different leaves, the juvenile ones being different form adult ones. As with Tsuga h. I think Araucaria was hhte name of a tribe in South America that early plant collectors encountered. Whoever it was that brought back A. araucana seems to have given the genus name after the tribe, he got the seeds as the story goes at a banquet given by the tribe. Doesn't matter if it's true, it's a mnemonic peg to hang the hat on. Here's the full tree, not a great specimen. I have a couple more from Lanzarote if anyone wants to have a go at them.

If you are still taking comments here are mine. 1. Problems - unlike Acer pseudoplatanus they are not regularly prone to weak compression forks, and the wood is so strong that they deal with compression forks admirably, even with included bark. They develop very strong tension forks, supporting in later years heavy almost horizontal lower scaffolds. They have their own set of diseases, Rhytisma acerinum, Cryptostroma corticale, Verticillium. Squirrels love them, chewing the bark of young stems especially near forks, which causes decay and breakages and thus upsetting the otherwise balanced canopy shape. 2. Others have already said they are probably filling the gap left by DED. I have been told they are also filling the niche by supporting a good proportion of the species that Elm supported, being apparently quite a good fit. For that they are to be viewed as a stabilising influence on biodiversity. 3. They are everywhere, due to prolific seeding and not being fussy about soil types. 4. They are reckoned not to be native, although there may be rasons for the lack of evidence. However, a tree species can't become native, only naturalised. What was native was fixed once and for ever after the ice age. 5. In parklands they are about 10% of population, not so popular as street trees (4%). In woodlands the percentages are very variable, depending on history and climax species. 6. Local Authorities will argue to keep them in Conservation Areas and TPos as if they were natives, but it depends on the Conservation Area Appraisal. When removed LA will accept alternatives as replacements when scale is n issue and a smaller final height is merited. Great wood, love working with them, you can usually get well anchored from above and can get right out the limbs. The wood is predictable and reliable when judging hinges, step cuts and the like. A concern is always that lower pruning can result in profuse and unstoppable sap bleeding, so I would encourage waiting until late winter before lower limb removals. Overall, any tree is better than no tree and although they are as common as muck and it would be nice to see a bit more variety like A. campestre I think they make an overalll positive contribution to landscape, wood supply, biodiversity.

One more from the Canaries. This one I know because my mother-in-law has verified it from one she had in her garden in Malta.

I do believe you are right! Thanks, I never would have found that. I have found out the name equisetifolia comes from the similarity to horsetail (equisetum), it looks remarkably similar. It must be just the ticket in the incessant drying winds of the Canary Isles.

Thanks for posting the pics, that tree wasa probably about as stiff as a cardboard tube compared to a tightly rolled up newspaper. You advised client well and he /she took right course of action. You'll never know if that has avoided someone being hurt or worse but definitely better safe than sorry. Another tree wil be along shortly to replace it.

There's one for sale in a nearby nursery, has been there for a while. When they finally get a sale they will have to take the roof off the conservatory and crane it out, it and its concrete tub must come in at about 2 tonnes.

Nice pictures, nepia, it's amazing how Olive just shrugs off its problems and keeps going. I wonder if it is resists decay because of the dry climate or because of some special defence system it has.

That Olivier was just for practice, but here's another one from the same sunny location that I don't know what it is but I wouldn't waste peoples' time by asking for an ident. If anyone knows please share it with me and others.

right first time. Here's a picture of the whole tree. Im pressive girth for little substantial canopy. And growing in what amounts to dust.

OK what's this gnarly old thing, recently photographed a good 4 hours' flight south of here?

A curious attribute of A. campestre (I read about it in a book then tried it when I found a few last winter) is that on a cold day the stem is slightly warm to the touch. We are not short of cold days just now, so it is worth giving that tree a wee squeeze someday and seeing if it is noticably warm. Don't know why, but it's true.

I just read the original question again. I thought it was about how (and why) to specify for diversity. But someone posted almost right away the answer to another question that you might have been asking which is how do you express the degree of existing diversity numerically. Which could be the Shannon Index or alternatively the Simpson Index. Some fairly heavy duty statistics calculations needed to work them out. Wikipedia introduces them quite well. But unless someone puts a gun to my head and makes me compare the diversity of species in two similar woodlands I aint never ever using them.

Sorry, meant to say the "GPS accuracy is worse than useless"

If you are just plotting (manually, if need be) a few on a map to indicate their position relative to roads and buildings, Promap is the way, but expensive map-by-map. An account is good if you use them ferequently. Last year I used a Geo Trimble with installed GIS maps, super-accurate and indestructible but too small a screen. Reports were easy because it exported data in Excel format. I am currently using Ezytreev with GIS maps and it is very straightforward, but I am using the client's maps and I don't know how dear they are. It is on a Samsung tablet and the GIS accuracy is worse than useless, so expect to manual plot on site. Report generation impossible without Ezytreev license and slow/enormous programme. Just all depends on how often you are using it and how particular the client is about reporting format.

Not another new one to the UK, I hope? Here in the west of Scotland all but a few Eucalyptus have been wiped out by what I assumed to be two successive hard winters of 09/10 and 10/11. They seemed to cause splits in the bark especially at the base but sometimes extending right up teh trunk. We took a lot of dead ones down , they generally had extensive mycelial sheets beneath large areas of separated bark, which could be pulled off like large plates. In effect what seemed to have lkilled the trees was not so much rupture due to frost but fungal infection admitted into and under bark by frost splits. These were all E. gunnii. This could I suppose be confused with rapid cambium killling of Armillaria? I haven't had a chance to look at any survivors to see if they were partly frost damaged but if they were and had a degree of bark separation they might well look like your pictures. Also of course I can't say whether recovery has taken place in any of the survivors. The standing deadwood of the victims seemed to show little short-term loss of strength and when felled had only zonal discoloration. I hope this observation is helpful in some wy and that for the sake of the remaining Eucalyptus population you tree has only got the same problem and not this nasty sounding Australian business.

The 10, 20 and 30 have probably been chosen for ease of remembering rather than due to any Fionacci connection. As they are ratios rahter than whole numbers the true Fibonacci series starting with 10% would be 10%, 16% and 26%. What would be really really interesting and evidence of the 10-20-30 formula being sound would be whether a woodland left to its own devices (as if H. sapiens would ever let that happen!) obeys the formula. If time and drinking obligations allow over the next week, I may try it out with a couple of NVCs. It would be lovely if it worked out...

From an Americal website "Frank Santamour of the United States Arboretum, without taking ownership, described in 1990 the 10-20-30 formula to develop a diverse tree population within a community or landscape. The rule-of-thumb is straightforward and is as follows: Plant •no more than 10% of any species, •no more than 20% of any genus, •no more than 30% of any family." This seems to be referred to generally as the 10-20-30 rule, but it is not so much a rule as a aparently a convention that has arisen from consensus. It would be nice (in answer to the riginal question) to be able to call it "Santamour's Rule" but as shown in the article that someone attached earlier in this thread it is not his but rather he has given it a degree of authority by testing then endorsing it. If I ever need a short title for it I think I will go with "10-20-30 formula".

C'mon guys, season of goodwill an all that! Now what was the question?

Just realised that if you are worried about not having LOLERed kit for your tests you can but prusik loops from Honey Bros that are EN certified and therefore can be used for 6 months before requiring inspection. They are about £7 + VAT.

We put a short length of shrink wrap on the rope before tying and setting the knot, write out a laundry label with indelible pen, slip the shrink wrap iover the knot and heat it with a hot hair dryer, it shrinks in place permanently and protects the knot, holding the label in place too. I think Honey Bros or Buxtons sell the wrap.

Yep that's just mould. Dry the wood and wipe it off with meths then sand if necessary. Larch is famously decay resistant and is used externally on buildings unstained as it will eventually 'silver' and a take on a distinctive and some say desirable natural weathering colour. Options are to use a clear fungicidal preservative, a clear ,matt varnish or a combined stain/preservative. Or do nothing, the mould would get washed off outdoors.