daltontrees

Wow, you guys are giving this subject a good seeing to! I amn't sure what this QTRA is, is it that sysstem devised by Forbes Laird that you have to pay for to get a license to use? This winter I am surveying around 8,000 trees for a nearby local authority. The contract specifies (words to this effect) that trees must pass the 1:10,000 risk of serious harm test or works must be specified to bring the tree within that probability. Evey single day for every single day I quantify the risk, there is no scope for pontification about the benefits or drawbacks of statistics or the question of whether a tree is Ok or not. It either passes or fails the threshold. And the more I have read your interesting and entertaining debat the more I am reassured that (i) without quantification of risk the whole business is impossible and (ii) most aspects of quantification are not that hard really. Read any survey report, if the author is worth a tosser the report will make it very clear (i.e. not just buried in the small print and disclaimers) that there is no such thing as a safe tree and that the report can only try and predict that the likelihood of harm is or is not above the threshold of acceptibility. The difficulty therefore lies often with the lack of client/public understanding with the limitations (and I don't mean cop-outs) of tree surveys and reports. That's my view anyway. It keeps me sane out on survey day after day after day.... when otherwise I would go ga ga.

Dead right. Small businesses earn money, banks literally make it out of fresh air. They are a necessary evil, I plan to continue to use them only to teh extent things can'be done any other way.

Methyl blue.

Nicely put, TS. I would add that felling while an application is in and with a request for an AIA outstanding would be unwise. So if the COuncil gets the AIA it has a couple of options, but it depends what the AIA concludes. If it concludes development can take place (even while encroaching on RPA) without loss of trees, the Council would be hard pushed to challenge that view by a suitable consultant and should grant subject to conditions for the trees' protection. If it concludes the trees can't be saved, it might still grant consent but if it feels the trees are special and that there is a public interest it probably shouldn't just refuse consent but should also make a TPO. I would phone up the Council and informally ask what weight it is attacvhing to the trees and why. At worst you will be told nothing, at best it may provide some useful perspective and result in a better AIA. If the Council is asking for an expensive AIA out of laziness that would be indefensible. It sounds like there is a precautionary presumption against loss. Tread carefully in all such situations.

To answer earlier question, a couple of customers have mentioned they are happier writing cheques to our company but no-one ever said they wouldn't have made a cheque to me or my business partner personally. I think it looks more professional to have company account, especially when dealing with bigger commercial clients. OK, when I started with our bank the charging structure was bearable. Then the year free banking was up and the costs were indeed Ok. Then we got a letter saying that in a few months time the bankl would be adding (for no additional service) a service charge of £120 a year. That really p****d me off. I then looked at changing banks but all the local banks did the same thing at about the same time. I thought about shifting account to get another year free somewhere, but it's so much hassle to change it. As has been said, banks are in business like us, but if they could do it without levying a service charge before, why charge now? If they did that to their personal current account customers they wouldn't have any left. Final moan on the matter is this. The service charge (ignoring the extra transaction charges) is the same whether you use the bank once a year or a thousand times. Whether you are putting £1000 through it or £100,000. If I was startign again I would try and get by with a personal account for as long as possible before paying for a business account.

Slings are the only way! Bin them as soon as they start to look distressed, otherwise they are confidence-inspiring, fast, easy to choker and have never let us down. Our main lowering rope has a figure of 8 permanently tied in it, it is the knot that loses least rope strength, to my knowledge. Linked to sling by a steel screwgate krab. Dynamic loading can almost always be catered for in the capstan. Nearly broke a lowering rope once with about 300k of chestnut I tipped off, but it held. I just had to change underpants and cut the figure of 8 off and tie a new one. Sling and krab were fine.

We gotta have a business account, customers don't like to write cheques to either of the partners personally. Makes you look dodgy if you don't have a business account anyway. And if you ever need to borrow off the bank, it sure helps to have banked with them for a few years as a business. I'd sooner diwe than borrow off the bank, mind you, they ar eslowly and discretely bleeding money from us, like a leech. Only a small amount but annoying considering they do nothing much for it. I am with Clydesdale Bank, when my free year was up I looked at Bank of Scotland and Royal Bank, they were more or less the same cost. I now use the account purely for paying in cheques (by post, haven't been to a branch for nearly a year), direct debits, online purchases and transferring drawings. Never ever use it to pay in or withdraw cash, the charges are thievery.

Overcast, cold and drizzly in Glasgow. Gonna be a hard winter for the squirrels anyway, there are just about no conkers, acorns, beech nuts round here. If it's not cold enough for hibernation that's bad news.

An enormous task! If you could narrow it down people like me could pitch in. No point, for example, in me sending you every picture I have of trees, leaves, buds etc. but if there wasa running list somewhere of what species and varieties you have already got I could check it and would be more likely to send you stuff for the rest.

Sorry, I meant to say again my understanding is based on Scottish law. And is no substitute for commissioned advice.

Thanks for the interesting reference to the case that refined the definition of 'intention'. Still sounds to me like one definition is 'wilful' and the other is more like 'reckless'. But with the penalties being so severe who wants to take a chance? TPO legislation CANNOT be used to prevent a land use, it can only be used to penalise unauthorised tree work (including felling). The land use can be an old estblished one or a new one. And if the landowner protected the roots and continued the use there would be nothing the Council could do under TPO law to stop it. The Council could use OTHER legislation to stop the use. If it is trying to use TPO law it is barking up the wrong tree and won't I think get very far with formal action. As it stands with the roots unprotected the Council would have to prove that the landowner, purposefully for the indirect and foreseeable outcome of destroying the trees, allows your friend to have customers drive over the roots of the trees once a month. I doubt if that is the intention of the TPO laws , if the landowner was at all purposeful about getting rid of the trees there would be easier quicker and more certain ways of doing it.

Ah but if you interpret 'wilful' as deliberate then it would only be an offence under TPO law if vehicles were being driven over roots for the purpose of destroying them and the trees. I would be more worried if the law said 'reckless'. The LA would be hard pushed to show that the landowner was permitting the damage for the purpose of destroying the trees. Reminiscent of the change that was made in the law about destroying birds nests, the law used to say wilful but was changed to reckless, because there had been an easy defense. That is why I think if the LA brought root damage to landowners attention and the activity that was causing the damage then continued a defense would become more difficult. But not impossible

Another RBOTI reply here. The English legislation may be slighly different from what we have up here, but if it were here the TPO couldn't in any way be used to stop the use. It could be used though to prosecute for wilful damage or destruction of trees. The penalties are quite severe. But the damage has to be wilful and since it is not the result of a single action like felling or excavation and your average 4X4 guy couldn't be expected to know he was damaging a tree by driving over roots, it could be tricky for the LA to pin it on one person or to show that it was wilful. If the LA brings it to the attention that continued use will cause damage, it might thereafter be construed as wilful, but as someone has pointed out further damage could be prevented by resurfacing etc. Sounds likk you're right about the politics. The answer to your question, based on Scottish legislation, would be NO!

Snioppet from nearby Informed Tree Services website... "The Forestry Commission Scotland have released the following disease alert. It relates to Chalara fraxinea - a potentially very serious risk to our Fraxinus excelsior (Common Ash) population.: "Alert issued as ash tree disease found in Scotland Forestry Commission Scotland is urging woodland managers throughout Scotland to be vigilant for signs of a serious disease that has affected ash trees in Europe. The appeal follows the discovery of Chalara dieback of ash (caused by the fungus Chalara fraxinea) in trees planted in 2009 in a woodland managed by Forest Enterprise Scotland (FES) at Knockmountain, 2km north of Kilmacolm. "The 200 hectare (ha) site has 20 ha of mixed broadleaves including 58,000 ash plants. The disease, which has recently been recorded at three nursery sites / locations in England, has the potential to kill millions of ash trees if it spreads into the natural environment – as it has done in Europe, including the death of an estimated 60 to 90 per cent of Denmark’s ash trees. Bugger!

Sure looks like kretzschmaria deusta to me. Bear in mingd by the time the black stuff has appeared at the surface the fungus may already have hollowed the tree out form the inside. You see whole beech trees just snap at the base due to this stuff. If you've got a riddled leaner that close to the road you would need to have a very good reason not to fell it within a couple of weeks.

Alder Buckthorn and Cockspur Thorn both have 2 or 3 seeds per fruit, never 4. I'd say it's definitely Malus and then I'd give up.

Brett's comments about tar spot in fife and Angus fairly spoils my amateur theory but then born2trot confirms Aberdeen is same as around Glasgow. Southeast, Wales, Merseyside and Bucks spotty. I was down in London between Christmas and New Year last year and the Planes were still partly in leaf along Pall Mall. See photo. Mild aint the word. There aren't enough up here for me to have noticed if they came out early.

Interesting topic! AA signals seem counter-intuitive. especially one hand up for stop. This ofr us usually means either OK or 'akcnowledged, I'll go and do that asap'. For me the most important one os for switching off saw. With a saw off communication is always then easier. On a windy day or when high up sometimes shouting isn't enough. I usually supplement what I am saying about a cut by indicating with forearm (with elbow against back of teh other hand) what is to happen with branch to be cut eg. fold up, fold down, hinge and swing left etc. And a sweep of the arm indicates the need to clear an area better than tapping a helmet. So, I suppose we all have our own systems. As long as they are pre-agreed on site and are unambiguous and easily remembered it doesn't much matter what they are. I would add though that for traffic management something that can be seen from 200m away when the signaller is little more than a silhouette has to be needed. Whole arms then become essential.

I've had a look at 'Diseases of Trees and Shrubs' (Sinclair et al). The most relevant bit I can see is "During autumn and spring apotheca develop in stromata on fallen leaves that remain moist. Apotheca ripen during spring, split the surface of the stroma open, and eject sticky ascospores as much as 1mm into teh air. Some spores alight on young maple leaves, thereby starting a new annual cycle." Also mentioned is "Conspicuous outbreaks of tar spots are infrequent except in moist sheltered locations favourable for winter survival of the causal fungi". 1 mm is not a lot. It would need a bit of wind eddies around trees to get the spores up to the new leaves. My amateur theory for the lack of spots up here is that it was so hot (yes, hot!) in late march when the leaves were flushing that the leaf litter from the previous year was bone dry, preventing apotheca ripening and spore ejection. The subsequent 6 months of horizontal rain must have helped the trees too. I wonder, did the areas where there is lots of tar spot have bizzarely dry weather around bud break? I guess Aberdeeen would have been hot like Glasgow at the time.

The chat is much more interesting than the subject of this thread! Today I saw a sycamore (I was surveying it for the Council) with NO tar spot on it. I've never before in my life seen such a thing. And you can be sure ht Council doesn't clear up the leaves in this park every winter or the bit of waste ground next door right under the canopy. Maybe I've got R. acerinum growing on my brain and it's affecting my vision. NOT seeing spots before my eyes, as it were.

Sorry, David, I just found where I read about overwintering...

I remember reading somewher that R. acerinum overwinters as spores in leaf litter and reinfects the tree every year but I don't know what the vector is. I'll look into it and post anything I find. Who knows, aphids could carry the spores but if they overwinter in bark or on stems it's not so likely that they are the vector. Anyway, that's odd that you are getting plenty of tar spot down south but we aren't up here. It's a much needed boost for the sycamores not to have their photosynthesising capacity reduced, it has been a dull summer with only a handful of sunny days that I can remember.

No-one's going to take that bet, cos you're right too. C. x waterei and C. frigidus are apparently either synonyms or so closely related that they aren't truly separate species.

It certainly isn't up here in Glasgow. I started to notice a month ago that there wasn't the usual ubiquitous peppering on sycamores, but now I am positively astonished at how little tar spot ther is this year. The leaves are just starting to fall and regularly I can find trees with no spotted leaves. Is it the same in other parts of the country. And why or why not? Wettest summer in 100 years? Warmest march? Coolest 2nd quarter?

I have a Nymansay in my garden, oddly I am doing the opposite, I am rigid bracing stems to force them to grow wider apart. Just experimenting, the thing is still very young. Anyway, before getting the Nymansay I spent a lot of time looking at grown examples along the west coast and reading up about them. They are naturally very fastigiate, a mass of compression forks really, though usually not so much so as to have problems with included bark. I would expect a bit of loose bracing to be just the thing to encourage re-fusion, but having done this on a few norway maples I know it is s a fine line. Allowing even a tiny bit of movement that allows the fork to open in winds will prevent a new skin of wood from developing around the split. Too tight and it spreads the split downwards. My local experiments so far that are working involve firm bracing loosened every year immediately after a reduction of the braced branch(es). Again, this is a fine line. The unions have failed for a reason (overloading) and so a reduction is needed to avoid repeating this on removal of artificial support (bracing) but as much foliage as necessary should be kept for as long as possible to aid healthy tissue development across the split. So if your client is up for the inevitable expense it's years of firm brace, reduce and loosen slightly, reduce and loosen slightly, reduce and loosen slightly ad infinitum. Good luck, with Eucryphia you will need the patience of Jobe to achieve a lasting fix.