daltontrees

Almost certainly Jelly Ear. Very common.

England and America are two countries separated by the same language. (Bernard Shaw) Quite a different sentiment.

Same as under the old rules, i.e. it's not defined. Trees which are technically part of the curtilege of a dwelling but would also come under the generally understood meaning of woodland would not be exempt. Also the last Reg 6 removes the garden exemption if it's a small woodland and of certain species. There have been and will continue to be grey areas. Individual ornamental species closest to and most intimately adjacent to a house are clearly exempt, but the farther away you get, the denser the trees, the more native then the less obvious the garden argument is. It wouldn't be too hard to systematically remove a lot of trees by using combinations of quarterly allowances and garden exemptions, but is needed because one big broadleaf will give no change out of 5 tonnes and if it's deemed too remote to be part of the garden it could be an offence to remove a second one at the same time. I've had and still have some borderline cases, but the underlying purpose of the Act is not clear enough to say what public interest there is in preventing private householders doing with their trees whatever they see fit. Parliament snuck the Regulations through with minimal consultation and ignored warnings in what consultation they did do. I personally wrote to the Minister about a couple of howlers in the draft Regs but he did precisely nothing about it. This is quite typical of the Scottish Parliament. Who decides what's a garden? A sheriff court initially. I wouldn't ask SF, it has no greater right or insight than anyone else to be able to decide.

I looked at the Sterken calculator, all the calculations are hidden, you just put numbers in and an answer comes out. He has published papers about it but I've not seen them. They'd probably turn up with a search. I can send you a copy of the calculator, he told me it was free to use.

Whoa! That says glasspaper. Is it really pastels on sandpaper?

That's a lot of detail for what's barely bigger than A4. It's lovely to have full provenance and a personal connection with art.

What does it mean? I am from the school of 'if it's a nice thing in its own right, it doesn't need to mean anything else for it to be art'.

Extraordinary and beautiful! Probably the artist had to cut a tree down afterwards for wood to replace the pencils.

monkey business has basically covered it there. I'd just add though that you need to watch out for the need for felling license (or 'permission, as it is now officially called in Scotland) even if there are no CAs/TPOs. It's a bit of a weak system. You can remove a tree before you apply for PP. You can remove it after the development is done. In theory you could even remove it while you are waiting for a planning decision (but I wouldn't recommend it). You just can't remove it after consent and before completion. There's an even stranger scenario. If you get consent but decide not to use it, you could remove a tree straight away, but this could mean that if you then changed your mind and decided to use the consent you could have enforcement action taken against you. It's not always that daft. I have come across a situation several times where a housing estate also has conditions that the developer has to put in place a mechanism for the maintenance of the open spaces. This is usually achieved by burdening all the houses with a share of the ownership and responsibility for the open spaces, and the need for a residents association. If the trees are in the common ownership areas, by rights a majority decision of the residents association is needed to allow removals. I am the chair of our RA and getting any two people to agree on anything is just about impossible. It leads to a situation where tree removals are rare, and usually unauthorised. In effect they are protected by intransigence. As chair I only sanction removals or pruning without a majority vote if they are a legal nuisance. As I say, just watch out for the new felling permission rules. Forestry Scotland is a bit unpredictable in its tolerance and interpretation so far. I did an article in the WInter Arb Magazine that covers it all.

Tis was my grounding in the subject Woodland Management A Practical Guide - Second Edition 9781847976178 | Brand New WWW.EBAY.CO.UK <br />Woodland Management A Practical Guide - Second Edition by Chris Starr 9781847976178 (Hardback, 2013) <br...

If no-one goes there then there's no risk and no reason to remove the limb. The tree will already have compartmentalised he damage and decay at an appropriate point. Cutting off a branch will only open up decay again. You'll not stop the spread of any disease by removing the limb. I'd say leave it.

Lichen. Common, and a good sign.

The smoking ban was fair enough, in an enclosed space one or more smokers exhale smoke and one or more non-smokers can't avoid inhaling it. The analogy to enclosed spaces, for wet wood burning, would be densely populated areas where there's no dilution and no avoiding the smoke, and where there's many affected. But the analogy breaks down. For smokers, the analogy would be to ban the sale of non low tar cigarettes to people who might be going to the pub. Unless you buy them in cartons of 200.

This one is interesting in that, although it is a photograph (which is almost 8' x 4') the name is arty. I don't get it, but it's a nice photo. Its called "False Perspectives 2019 ‘Now there, I make a comma…’ " and it's by by Kate Whiteford.

I am full of admiration for any artist that can create a likeness or even an impression of a tree. I have been finding it hard to find figurative tree art, I suspect my next few postings will just be paintings of trees. I was at a gallery last week and have quite a few to add.

That's really nice. I'd take that instead of cash. The cash would have been spent long ago but art just keeps giving.

I really rather like that, it seems the stuff of childhood dreams. I've even been inside a grossly overgrown double row hedge recently that felt like that.

I remeber it fondly. Manys a studenty party I went to, Deaan poster on the wall, teacloth on the lamp for soft lighting, whiff of josticks, Tangerine Dram on the hifi, no end of deep and meaningless discussion.

This one is a copper etching by Ian Westacott called Brahan Elm. The detail is exquisite.

I haven't added to this thread for a while. Here's rather unspectacular painting by James Castle called Under the Tree. I have no idea what it's saying

Good point, and well done for dragging the inof out of the Council. If there's no SCZs, there would be an initial preference for introducing them before considering banning the sale of pollutiong fuels. And surely a ban should be based on population density or measured existing pollution? The government currently does exactly nothing to police the suitability of wood burning stoves in SCZs. A list is published every now and again of makes and models that comply with the higher standard for stoves in SCZs. If you waited for it to be updated you'd never buy a stove; models have been known to go out of production before they make it onto the scottish list. Instead pretty much anyone who cares just buys a DEFRA approved stove (english standards), which mostly eventually make it on to the scottish list. Again, requiring compliance with stove spec is something that could be done long before banning wood. There's also the possibility of phasing out non-compliant stoves even in non SCZs. It'll be interesting to see how th english regs are to work. Will it be illegal to give away wood? WiIl it be illegal to possess it? To transport it? To burn it? Are they going to pull the burning log out of the fire and check its humidity as evidence?

A guy called Peter Sterken produced a spreadsheet calculator a few years ago that I think probably does the same as treecalc, it almost certainly relies on the same formulae. I'll dig it out when I get to the office.

No, I can't. It is probably an immensely complicated calculation. But basically the tree is pulled a bit, and the lifting of rootplate and the bending of the stem are extrapolated by calculation to th amounts that would occur if the applied load was the same as the loads ina 1 in 50 wind event. These must be compared with critical values for tree failure. If the strenght critical values are 1.5 times the calculated deflections, there's a 1.5 safety factor.

Well, separate to what was said in the presentation, it is entirely possible that climate change might justify recalibration of what would be considered a 1 in 50 year wind event. And I think it is only a matter of time before a court case challenges what is an acceptable threshold for duty of care and freseeability of failures. By rights there should be a review of wind loading for building design (BS6339-2:1997). If there was, the static loading assumptions would have to be adjusted. Or to put it another way, trees that SLT results say are sound should be failing these days. Attached meantime is my version of the wind speed map from BS 6339, I have converted the speeds from m/s to m.p.h. Paul Muir is based in Bristol (45mph) but Dundee is 52mph which is 15% higher. And speds need to be adjusted (for building design) for terrain, orientation, season and altitude, so there's nowhere near a one-size-fits-all speed. mph.pdf

No I said " There is a very narrow window between trees having enough extra strength that reduction is not necessary, and being so bad that removal is the appropriate action." But that means what you thought it might mean i.e. it's either got a bit to spare and doesn't need reduction or has nothing to spare and reducing it might belp but will pushit into rapid decline and removal would be a better plan. That rather overlooks the retrenchment or last-gasp options that involve pruning, but I think we can all see that reduction as often specified by tree surgeons and consultants is either a work-generating option or a scaredy-cat reaction to defects which haven't been properly assessed. Many of these fancy-sounding VTAs that I see have quite simply not bothered to assess the strength of the remaining parts, which is after all in the core description of VTA. Paul Muir admitted to there being imprecisions in the system, so it's not that decisive. Think in terms of a 50% margin of error.