daltontrees

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.

As an experiment I have kept some Armillaria infected wood in my wood store to see how it behaves. As expected, as soon as it is isolated from ongoing water supply i.e. stored out of teh rain and off wet grounbd the Armillaria ceased activity. As you may know, it can spread by rhizomorphs, hyphae or spores, the first of these allowing it to spread beyond immediately wet wood or a water source. No water, no activity! I don't even see how processed firewood could hold enough resurces for Armillaria to produce fruiting bodies and spread by spores. In my experience the risk of spread from processed and propely stored firewood is negligible. And certainly trivial compared to if the stump is to be left in the ground, that's just asking for trouble for any nearby susceptible species.

Seems to be named after the area of Germany known as Swabia ('Schwaben') in German). Among famous swabians, wikipedia lists Andreas Stihl! We use this knot as standard for climbing, and we just call it the 'swabian'.

Seems to be named after the area of Germany known as Swabia ('Schwaben') in German). Among famous swabians, wikipedia lists Andreas Stihl! We use this knot as standard for climbing, and we just call it the 'swabian'.

I do believe you are right! Cheers, I would never have thought of Cotoneasters when looking at trees.

Does anyone know what this tree is? There are 3 in a public park in Glasgow, first impression was they were Magnolia but they can't be because they have berries (bitter, 2 seeds each). Deciduous, and the alternate leaves look like goat willow only longer and with no irregularities to the margins. I have been through Phillips and the Collins guide but can't find anything that's even nearly right!

Thanks yet again. Parts are ordered and hopefully on their way. I can only imagine previous owner of saw took pick-up off for some reason then couldn't put it on again.

Thanks for extra comments. It is really odd that my oil pickup is missing from both my 200s but I will track down the replacements and get them put on. Yesterday was too busty on site to be getting oil pumps but maybe today...

A somewhat simplistic but nevertheless valid view is that the HRA merely codified existing law and that one shouldn't expect any radical changes to come from it, just a percieved new ease of assserting long existing human rights?

Hey, thanks! There is indeed a black pipe passing through the tank wall and going past the crankshaft to the oil pump, but i'd swear that inside the oil tank there is no filter or pipe. Would need one of those wee mirrors on a stick like dentists have to check for sure. I will try your trick with the oil pump first and if that seems to be the problem I will whip the pump off another 'dormant' 200 and give it a whirl on site tomorrow. We have a massive conifer to do and I don't think I could stand another day of intermittent oiling.

I would appreciate any thoughts anyone has on a problem with one of our 200s. It was bought second hand as a backup then someone nicked our main one and this has now become our regular saw up trees. In short, the problem ius it oils perfectly well sometimes and not at all other times. This has been going on for months. Yesterday it just stopped oiling mid job and started overheating the bar. I swore at it so loudly that our client, a very churchy man, heard it through his double glazing to the other side of the house and came out to see if I needed an ambulance. Today it worked perfectly for nearly 2 tanks then stopped oiling. The groundy 10m below said he could smell burnning plastic. In fact the inside of the clutch cover is a mess and melted in places. I only just resisted throwing the saw out of the tree onto a rockery. I have had the thing apart umpteen times, and had it into a Stihl dealer who cleaned it out and pronounced it was fine and billed me for £36. There's no split on the oil pipe, no block in the connector and the worm gear and pump spindle all seem to move precisely and freely. Some days I start the saw, it won't oil so I take the bar and clutch cover off and start it and I can immediately see oil coming out where it should. It then works fine when I put the bar on. This has become a daily routine now, no hardship as I like to clean and scrape the bar daily anyway. I am loth to fork out £40 on a new oil pump, and because the saw is otherwise fine I want to get another year or two out of it. The Stihl dealer was a bit of a waste of time and money. And here's a funny thing, I cannot figure out if the 200 should have an oil pickup in the oil tank. You can buy the pickups from L&S, and the 200 exploded diagram shows an oil pipe and pickup in the tank yet this saw has none. Should there be, and could this be the problem? The rockery awaits...or is it a simple fix?

We've got 2 357s both operating with 18" as default bar length, a bit sluggish on broadleaf unless razor sharp chains but fly through spruce/larch/pine/cypress. We have a 455 too that is the same, likes a 18" bar. Never tried anything bigger as I don't want to fork out on a longer bar in case it doesn't work and can't be mounted on our bigger saws. I was always curious whether a .375 sprocket and chain would allow a longer bar to be used for softwood forestry stuff. A 357' about the heaviest saw I'd like to be waving around all day in forestry but we can spend days and days in a certain age of forestry where you think an extra couple of inches would save a lot of faffing around.

Quercus semicarpifolia. Himalayan Brown Oak. The building is the Ulster Museum, in the Belfast Botanics.

Right genus, but none of those species, but you're so close with what the pictures show that I might have to tell you. Final picture, meantime, as I said it's only a baby. I didn't include this one before because there is a well-known building in the background in a well-known park that at this location is a bit quercus-obsessed and it would have given it away for anyone local. Last clue, it is associated with Spain/Portugal/Algiers/Tunisia. How it fares in our current sh!t climate remains to be seen.

As I don't know how perfectly representative of the species these pictures are (it was a young specimen) I willl give you a clue. Order Fagales.

Definitely not Ilex and definitely definitely not Osmanthus. Barking up the wrong shrub there...