daltontrees

There's just one question, and that is what/who will be hit in the weather conditins that would cause it to fall in the direction of lean. Any instinct to fell it without this being considered is probably motivated by wanting firewood or paid work. It looks to be going slowly. Has it stood up to several recent blasts? A height reduction might allow it to carry on for a few decades. Bulge at the back should have a matching dip at the front, otherwise it might just be adaptive growth. Or both. No-one can say based in these photos.

Walnut is high up my list of species that don't recover from pruning wounds. If the cause is butchery the treatment is to hope.

Doesn't look like Daldinia to me. I've never seen Daldinia on lime either and never on a tree tha wasn't dead already or as good as.

Seems a pretty good match. So if it's Brazilian Peppertree best prevent it spreading seeds or the neighbours will not be happy. Dammit now I've got to go off and see if it needs a pollinating partner.

Yes that's the same one I was looking at.

I had coincidentally just homed in on Brazilian Peppertree.

To be honest I don't know. Florida is in hardiness zones 9 and 10 whereas most of UK is 8, so it's possible your plants are somethings that nobody here has ever seen growing outdoors in the UK. Especially if they're native to US. Hopefully someone else will be able to ID them.

Yes purtugese laurel always alternate, always serrated margin and always long petioles. Definitely neither are PL.

I'm pretty sure neither of these are portugese laurel. Don't know yet what they are.

I had this very issue a few years ago. Planning enforcement officer turned up with cliched clipboard. We were getting the rear of the house roof reslated, the roofer had left spare scaffolding on the front lawn, this was obvoiusly too much for a local curtain twitcher who had seen my 2.5 tonner on the drive most evenings and had heard the occasional chainsaw round the back, put 2 and 2 together and got about 5 million. I brought the planner in to the house, offered him a cuppa, showed him the wood burning stove, explained it ate about 5 tonnes a year, took him out the back and showed him the woodstore and the chopping block, showed him the 12 x 8 store where I kept my gear. Explained the only cutting on site was done for personal use. I'd swear he ticked a box on the clipboard, but we agreed (well, he didn't disagree) that it was some complainant nearby with f&*% all else to do with their time but make spurious complaints, he never came back, I never heard anything more. I'd say that because he got the honest approach and guided tour he was on my side in the end.

Excellent rant!

Councils may be trying to shun maintenance responsibilities, the standard request to a Council round here to cut anything is basically 'you can cut it as long as it doesn't cost us anything'. In your situation you could ask Highways if it's their trees. If they say no, it doens't prove anything but it is a get-out-of-jail-free card for you. If it says the trees are its, that could be difficult to challenge. I wonder if a contractor could get done for breach of Forestry Act instead of the customer? Same scenario as TPOs and CAs, isn't it? Tree contractors are specialists, they should know to check on behalf of customer. If you think it's difficult, count your blessings you are not up here where we have a whole new Act and significant changes to the 'license' laws. There seems to be Scottish Forestry people out scouring the country for offenders, like so many ring wraiths. Or some curtain twitcher calls them and they're tapping you on the shoulder before you've got the choke off.

Nah! Pop.

Perhaps you are trying to establish a rule from an example, but from all I know it doesn't work that way. The vesting arises from that whihc is maintained as public. Verges may be important to Highways if they contain services, comprise visibility splays, have lighting columns, lots of different reasons. The legal rule is clear, but its application extent will always depend on circumstances. I'm in Scotland and officially we have Roads, not Highways. We too have the same rule but this has shown to be a little vague in its application and I recall it has gone to court a few times. It always helps to have an obvious delineation like a fence or a line or a wall or a hedge or a ditch, but there isn't always one. In the OP's case it looked like shrubs with several distinct trees. I found I couldn't conclude anything from it.

Looks a lot like Inonotus dryadaeus (or is it Pseudoinonotus?)

The exemptions are clear in the legislation. 'To prevent danger'. The streetview pics suggest the trees were not dead, but that wold have been a valid reason not because a 'dead' exemption exists (it doesn't) but because a dead tree is not a tree. Diseased is only an issue if it is creating danger that needs to be prevented or, in the case of Dutch Elm Disease, if more than half the crown is dead.

It's not that simple. Verges and tree on them usually vest in the Highways Authority, regardless of who owns or owned the land beneath. This does not need to be shown on title deeds as it is a blanket statutory vesting. Mynor's book devotes 11 pages to this one issue. Maybe that gives an idea of the challenging nature of the issue? The bit you cite from Highways appears to be a particular situation of boundary trees, not verge trees.

I'm not out to persuade, without the facts all us humble onlookers can do is use it as an opportunity ot refine understandings of the rules and regulations. Maybe the trees were in a garden when they were chopped, although the evidence doesn't support it. The wall does look new, or at least recently cleaned. What we can definitely agree on is that Councils just make stuff up, and aren't good at it either.

Sorry, I'm still not getting it. If it's not in a garden it doesn't have that exemption. It doesn't really matter what other use it is in. Maybe you're confusing it with the public open space exemption, but since that could only have been exercised by the Council it's unlikely. In my view the public open space exemption would not apply anyway. The test of it is not public access, it is purpose (or use, in a slightly different word). There may be a whole side of the story we don't know about, though.

So it might be breach of Forestry Act, possible restocking obligation, criminal damage and a civil action for loss of tres owned by Council. Don't know, do we, but it can be edifying to rehearse the arguments.

I'll say again, it's the use of the land, not the ownership that matters. I can't see anyone successfully arguing that, having separated their garden from the public road and land that either officially or unofficially is used as road verge, the strip of ground is still part of their garden. Another ocnsideration is that Roads and Highways vests verges and in some cases the trees on them in the public onwership regardless of process and regardless of ownership of the land beneath the verge. That would explain the Counci's comments. It will have a register of adopted roads and verges that it can check.

That said, the streetview pic shows fairly small trees despite diameter, and may have snuck in under the 5 cube a quarter exemption.

The picture shows the stumps on a publicly accessible verge which might be in private ownership but is separated from the garden by a brick boundary wall. It's not the ownership that counts, it's the use. I'm not saying the law has been broken. I said "This appears to be a breach of the Forestry Act as there are no clear exemptions that could have been used to avoid the need for a felling license." That is based on what anyone reading this post and its various links could know and see.

It's 'public open spaces' and they are defined in the Forestry Act and can't ever include public road corridors unless laid out as a public garden or used for the purpose of public recreation. Utilities are exempt only if (and to the extent that) the trees are causing operational problems. Councils are not exempt.

They're not in a garden, thye are in the verge of a public road.