daltontrees

My first thought was Hornbeam. Several of the photos show the sudden narrowing and elongation of the leaf tip, although in some they are a bit shrivelled. You just don't get that in any of the Nothofagus but it is characteristic C betulus. The buds are a bit squat for C betulus but not out of the question for a tree that is surrounded in tarmac, frazzled and has set buds in such dry and hot conditions. The spacing of the leaves suggests low vigour too.

Thanks everyone, I can taste those mushy peas already. I will settle for the P. balsamifera trichocarpa which I think is a synonym for TT 32

The leaf floated very serenely to the ground, not a hint of spiralling. The pic I have of the whole tree is rubbish but I will try and insert it here. No, that didn't work... Anyway, the tree is about 10 metres high, very sraight upright trunk (DBH about 400mm), scaffolds coming off at right angles and they all slowly and gracefully curve upwards. Bark is fairly smooth with a few black diamonds but no significant roughening or furrowing (reminiscent of P. alba). The tree is in west end of Glasgow, playing havoc with wall (heaving and breaking its foundation I think) and with a large surface root. A cross between Cottonwood and Balsam would explain it perfectly. Descriptions in Hilliers, sketchy as they are, support this general view. I don't have Mitchell's but will notify Santa straight away of my interest. My Phillips is on loan so I can't look it up, I pebet there is a killer photo in it that put it beyond doubt. Any conclusions from the falling leaf test? And would anyone be worried about total removal close to buildings in terms of heave, it's a mighty light garage between tree and house and I expect it is wet enough that clays are perpetually swollen but any comments would be appreciated. It has to go but if it is a sensitive issue I could take it away over 3 sessions.

I am off immediately to drop a leaf and see what happens. When taking the sample I tried to snap it off, it wouldn't give at all and I ended up biting it off. It tasted minging (for those of you south of the biorder that means bitter).

Can anyone help with this one. Clients were told when they bought the house it had come from Italy. First instinct was Poplar but definitely not alba/canescans/tremula/nigra. Might be a Balsam Poplar or Cottonwood? Need to figure out how to attach pictures now...

Those aren't catkins they are fruit, explains why the leaves are on because otherwise the catkins would be just about done before the leaves are out. It has the bark of a willow, looks like S. caprea to me. Grey weillow has much narrower leaves. Always a chance too with willow that it's a hybrid. Anything is then possible.

They're just winding you up. That said, there's them that do that kind of cheating. Would LOVE to catch one of them out. Like the tosser round our way that was stopped from cutting a Lime tree down (he had the saw running and everything) on the grounds that it had Dutch Elm Disease.

What a breath of fresh air that post was, armybloke. I bet the macho brigade on the Forum won't read it though, not enough bar inches to hold their interest... Anyway, I will abstain from voting. The answer to the question where does your loyalty lie? is 'with yourself', not with the tree or the client. And because we are all different there are many different outcomes to what happens when any of us go out to advise a client. If it's a clear cut case and the tree has to go, it has to go. If it is perfectly healthy there are plenty of weasels who will prey on the cleient's ignorance and talk him/her into unnecessary work. But there are also decent folk who believe in trees or their reputation for objectivity and will discuss it all honestly with the 'client' and end up getting nothing from it financially but getting lots of much better things. I would say I swing about 10% of clients away from unnecessary work but in many other cases I still do the work if after my observations and advice they still want the work done. If I don't do it someone else will. Badly, possibly. Clients want to be told sometimes what they want to hear. We take down trees for people who have just bought a house, the previous owner may have loved the trees but the new owner wants light, a driveway, whatever. It is not as bad for the planet and mankind as them building a UPVC conservatory or getting a second car. And when we all get blown to smithereens someday, the trees will just move in and get on with it. All we can each do in the meantime is what we believe is right and so there is room for small differences to be made every day everywhere. So, Hamadryad, if you chuck in the towel, that's one less person winning quiet little daily victories for the trees.

Aye there's an enormous difference between the draft and the published BS. I think they just threw away the old one, ignored the draft and started from scratch. Good job too, the draft was only a minimal improvement on the 1989. Now it has been sorted right out.

Looks like a fairly hefty branch has been taken off for some reason, maybe IT was infected. And the cut looks like it has been painted with bitumen or something. The bark is detached too, top right. A cherry of any age is rarely going to survive all that and a wound that will never occlude, and that mass of fruiting bodies is more than the usual smattering of saprophyte. I still think it looks like 1st year G.australe suggesting white rot, ductile failure and ultimately demise. Looks too fleshy and not hairy enough for young S.hirsutum. I too willing to be corrected, I just enjoy a good whodunit.

Ganoderma australe? If so, the prognosis is not good.

I remember noticing in my Hyusky manual that you should use Husky 2stroke oil at 1:50 or any other 2stroke oil at 1:25. I thought this was just a marketing ploy to get you to buy their oil. Then I met a guy who said he had burned out a Stihl chainsaw by using cheapo 2stroke oil, apparently the usual garden machinery oil can't cope with the high revs. So I still only use chainsaw 2stroke oil at about 45:1. I wouldn't dream of using used engine oil on a bar, as well as being absolutely minging and horrendous for your cleint's garden, there's a reason it was being thrown out, namely it is full of tiny bits of metal from inside an engine, which can't be good if it gets inside your chain links.

Basically, as long as your arm and keep it on your right hand gear loop. I think the bungees are a great idea and we always have one end on the saw and an aluminium screwgate krab on teh other end. It is a good idea to pass the strop under the handle twice to take upo the slack anbd clip it back to itself so that when you are warming up the saw there is zero chance of the strop getting caught up. The elastic in the bungee guarantees this because it scrunches up.

200 comes with fancy wee plastic pop-up flaps for opening up the fuel tank and oil tank without using a tool. Specially designed to break off the first time you dunt the saw whike hauling it up a tree or twisting the flap when the cap is on a bit tight. A stupid and unnecessary backward step by Stihl. The 020 has big chunky caps with a slot in that you can open with the tip of a Silky. There's nothing there to break. I wouldn't swop my old 020 for a new 200, it just seems better made and mre reliable and keeps going and going (touch wood).

The new Oregon bar and chain arrived and I used it yesterday, what a joy it was and it was whistling through 0.8m dia discs of Cedar in about 1 minute. And much as an odd number of drive links may not damage a bar, I could feel the difference right away having an even number, it is much smooter cutting. The old chain needs sharpenign but I will be storing it away for only the most desparate emergencies. The bar was pretty poor when I bought it second-hand and although I dressed it about every hour of cutting I suspect it may have been overheated in a chainsaw mill by aprevious owner. The soaking in oil before fitting the new chain was recommended by the tutor on my CS30 course, and I've done it ever since. I suppose it means that the oil can get into the links before the chain is run, it could take a few minutes of running on the saw before the oil would infuse the links otherwise, saving on any metal-on-metal damage. I may as well use up my enormous supply of Arborol, and I can monitor its effect on my new bar and chain. The cost of it is so low that I don't even think about it when costing jobs, even ones like this week's where we were cutting dozens of discs. I have also noticed that Arborol's claim that the stuff helps cool the bar may be true. I use a Husq 357XP and my partner uses a 455 Rancher, I use Arborol and he uses Oregon mineral based chain oil and after 10 minutes of both of us cross-cutting his bar is noticeably hotter than mine. Ther may be other reasons for this but it is often me that is setting the chain tension the same on both saws, sharpenign them both a tthe same time, greasing the sprockets at the same time so there may be something in the cooling effect of the water in the Arborol. The downside is that the water seems to evaporate when you stop cutting, resulting in the chain being encrusted with the oil residue as shown in the original pictures. Anyway, I am back in love with the 181SE, long may it run.

Fair nuff Mesterh the chisel points are a bit rough although the edges are very sharp. I will need to improve my sharpening technique. The Arborol worries me a bit, especially as I have bought a huge load of it. I had been thinking of diliuting it a little less (it says on the label that if you are cutting wet trees like poplar or working in rivers you should reduce the dilution) but right enough in hot weather that might not be so smart. But next week I have some enormous Larch to cut into dozens of discs and the 'milk' seems good for that sort of thing as it is very very cheap and I am working on the ground and can check the temperature of the bar all the time. I will probably get through about 5 litres of diluted Arborol (cost about £1) instead of real oil at about £10. If i was doing it every day it would add up. My new Oregon bar and chain should arrive tomorrow, so I have to decide whether to switch to real oil. I will soak the new chain in it anyway before using.

Thanks everyone, the verdict is to tidy up the bar but put it and the chain aside for emergencies, and get myself a new Oregon 28" combo. May splash out on a new sprocket too. Thanks for the part numbers. I know it looks as if I have been ploughing fields with it but that's what chains look like when you use Arborol, when it dries it leaves a film on everything that invariably looks dirty. That chain is f***ing sharp, it was pulling off chips about 100mm long during yesterday's test. I am interested to hear that the odd number of drive links doesn't make any difference. Like would be the case with semi-skip chains I suppose. And I will turn up the oil feed rate, especially if I go for a longer bar.

Cheers, I have checked and it is an Oregon chain type 73 so it's a 1.5. The bar is Husky and says 3/8 on it (the pitch, I guess, for the nose sprocket) and there is a part number so I will see if I can find out what gauge it is. I have only been cutting Ash/Beech/conifers with it, I just took it out for a test 10 minutes ago and it flew through a 300mm diameter log of cypress in about 8 seconds. The inside of teh rails is intact it's just the outside that's chattered. Replacement Husky bar is about £70 and chain about £40 so I may get a 28" Oregon bar/chain combo next time which costs about £50 + £30. Oregon stuff's great on my other saws.

I wonder if anyone can explain a problem that has developed with the guide bar on my saw. It is a Husq 181SE that I bought second hand a while ago and despite reservations about its weight I have now grown to like it a lot, normally it whistles through anything you put in front of it. It still has the bar and chain it came with, which I believe is a genuine husq 26(ish) inch bar and a chain that has an odd number of drive links. This chain I know instinctively is a bad idea since the extra .375 inch spacing between two of the chisels has got to be causing vibration. Anyway I have persevered using it to pretty good effect but recently I noticed that the outside edge of the bar has shattered slightly in quite a few places. See the pic. The chain seems a sloppy fit in the groove, maybe the problem is that the chain could be a 1.5 and the bar a 1.6? Or the uneven number of links is setting up a vibration? I am also worried in case the Arborol (Oregon's water based chain oil and a fraction of the cost of oil) is not doing the job. Anyone seen this before or know what's happening? And should I just keep on using it toill it falls apart before putting my new bar/chain combo on?

If so the answer to the original question must be 'yes, more or less'... Regarding clays and the one year/2 year debate, wet clay is plastic and maybe the idea is that slow rehydration will allow expanding clays under foundations to expand sideways around the foundation rather than jacking up the building?

I was a surveyor in a previous life and the taught wisdom on tree removal was that to prevent heave in shrinkable (and therefore expandable) clays the tree should be removed gradually. Any RICS expert standing up in court to try and defend his advice to do otherwise, advice that had resulted in either heave or continued subsidence, would possibly get massacred. If we are to believe the cited paper there is some ideal balance whereby so much crown could be removed in year one as not to stimulate rapid moisture uptake of the regfenerating tree but not so much as would let the clays rehydrate gradually and not cause heave. After all that has been said in this thread I have absolutely no idea now what % should go in year one. %0% seems as good a guess as any. In practice people talk about trees as if they 'think' but it's not like trees have a board meeting every now and again to agree how many roots or shoots are needed. The real answer may lie somewhere in an understanding of the hormonal mechanisms that regulate (stimulate or inhibit growth). Maybe pruning sets loose a bucket of hormones that cause roots (that otherwiswe are woody and fairly passive) to put out a mass of new temporary rootlets to feed the new leaf and shoot and callus growth? This would be compatible with woody roots not dying back. I have read that a small amount of auxins in a growth tip will cause root or stem elongation but a large amount will inhibit it. Complicated. I must lie down now....

The authors of the article that Gimmer posted suggest that pruning has no long term effect on soil moisture depletion because the roots remasin unaffected by pruning. But surely if you reduce the crown repeatedly and over a long period there will be a net depletion of nutrients to the roots and they will not be able to (or need to) maintain themselves at their full extent and there will be dieback just as a crown dies back if it is deprived of water and nutrients? To say otherwise is to say that a root network once in place is indestructible. Fair enough, roots are not tested by weather, insects, mammals, fungi, bacteria (and tree surgeons) the same way as branches are so wastage will be slow but it MUST happen eventually?

Interesting article, Gimmer, thanks for making it available. There is something odd about the logic that I can't quite put my finger on. It may come to me though. Maybe being in the not-so-sunny west of Scotland makes it impossible for me to imagine Soil Moisture Deficiency.

Here's what I think may be a couple of relevant bits from the AFAG guidance a. the guidance 'does not cover exceptional situations where the risk assessemnt shows advanced or alternative felling techniques are required' b. 'It is important to remember that felling is a one-person operation' It seems that if your buddy is not working on another tree but just watching from 2 trees away he isn't really 'working'. Safest place has to be in the other 'escape route' position (3 oclock to 4.30 or 7.30 to 9 oclock). If your risk assessment could show that the risk of fatigue and leaving a tree mid-fell for any lenght of time outweighs the risk of 2 people at the butt in the escape zones surely there's no problem? Isn't that what you're saying anyway? Give the jobsworths a copy of it and they'll retreat with their posteriors covered. Otherwise it looks on paper like a fair cop...

I have aStein on my Treemotion too, the weak belt loop on it was starting to tear (again) so my wife stitched a a bit of cheapo webbing belt and buckle round it and it is pretty much indestructible now. I reckon it will save me the cost of several of these kits in the long run, Would NEVER climb without kit.