daltontrees

Those yellow marks in the pictures are yellow 'no 'parking' lines, that's the only dimensions I can give. Rough, sandpapery feel to leaves, like glabra.

I found this one (actually 2 beside each other in Stirling this week. What is it? It's an Elm for sure, but which one.

If it's an Elm it doens't look like one of the british ones, but is a close match to Siberian U. pumila. I have a confusing Elm ID pic coming up...

Backfill the periphery with firmed soil, mulch again and leave. You might expect some important roots further down that would be knackered by a tree spade (which is not a cheap business at that size). I'd be tempted to carefully examine root structure and see if any selective girdling roots above 25mm could be severed cleanly.

The current conditions are unusual but not unprecedented. Have these trees lived through similar dry conditions in the last few decades? Yes. Did they survive? Well, obviously yes. Will they do it again? Almost certainly. They might even flush again this year if we get some decent rain. Is thre any risk in waiting till next spring?

The White Willow/Phellinus ignarius association is a strong one. I saw it on almost every late mature withey I surveyed in north Wales a couple of years ago, and on injured younger trees too. I think it's common name is Willow Bracket. Yours looks like classic P.i., can't think what else it would be.

PS I'm still just saying what I was told at the weekend. I haven't observed any of this first-hand yet.

That's for a clan of typically 6-7. Nomadic badgers can cover 200km2. Setts can have satellite setts that are only used for short periods, perhaps coinciding with foraging there, and would extend the territory. It's more energy-efficient to build a satellite sett than to commute every day, bearing in mind that setts can last for centuries.

Me too, best repost picture.

I was on a badger course yesterday, so I',m not an expert, but it's fresh in my mind. This wasp nest question came up. Foxes and badgers will both seek out wasps nests, and apparently are good at judging the point at which the grubs are at their plumpest. Badgers when they dig push stuff to their sides and behind, whereas foxes shove it mainly behind. If there's a big area of spoil it's probably badger. Typiucal badger territory is 1km2. Sett could be on adjacent land. But it's been a hard hard year for badgers finding food, so they could be coming from further away, foraging new territory. Or they could be nomadic. All according to the Badger Society yesterday.

And presumably a bigger surface area to have to callus over? Oddly enough, Shigo in Modern Arboriculture says small damaged roots should be followed back to where they are at least 1-2cm diameter and cut there. Suggesting a bigger wound is better.

I haven't been able to find any such literature.

It may be difficult to establish the type of damage sheet liping does, since its very nature is to drive steel sheets into the ground rather than excavate then retain. The severed end of tree roots will always remain covered on the retained side. Shhet piles are typically 20mm steel sheets, hardly a Silky for clean cuts. Likely to mash anything in their way. Remember, RPA is a rooting volume for ongoing vitality, and BS 5837 says (constructively) nothing about avoiding tree roots. Apart from slow hand-digging to identify roots before they are damaged, there is no precaoution against wholesale severance by the likes of sheet piling. 5837 doesn't mention sheet piling but the generality is that "5.3.1 The default position should be that structures (see 3.10) are located outside the RPAs of trees to be retained. However, where there is an overriding justification for construction within the RPA, technical solutions might be available that prevent damage to the tree(s) (see Clause 7). If operations within the RPA are proposed, the project arboriculturist should: a) demonstrate that the tree(s) can remain viable and that the area lost to encroachment can be compensated for elsewhere, contiguous with its RPA; b) propose a series of mitigation measures to improve the soil environment that is used by the tree for growth." I suspect you're at that point now. "technical solutions might be available that prevent damage to the tree(s)" are a non-starter, as it will be like getting a haircut with a hatchet. "demonstrating th the trees can remain viable" may include arguments about vitaity in the face of likely pathogen colonisation of several crush wounds below ground in an unreadable quasi-anaerobic environment where pathogens lurk at their finest. In that context, compensation of rooting volume elsewhere would be cold comfort to a tree, or to an amenity-conservant LPA. Good luck with it.

What, is this descending into the Facebook version of Arbatalk? It's Sorbus aria, Whitebeam. It's probably called Whitebeam because it's white and the early english word for tree is 'beam' c.w. current german 'Baum' = tree, and the word for horizontal wooden structural members in buildings = beam. And yes I am a pompous word/tree snob. But doesn't make me wrong. I just cling on involuntarily to ways of remebering things. And Oakstag, the Lutescens I think is a cultivar of Whitebeam, and when you see a confrimed one it's quite gobsmacking how big and White the leaves are. Doesn't Collins Tree Guide describe them as like paper plates left behind after a picnic?

Nothing to worry about. I surveyed 50 trees today, typical spectrum, of which about 5 were mature Sycamore and 2 of them had flaking bark like this. As long as the bark beneath is intact I can see no cause for alarm, it's probably just a variation betwen individuals, like one person having freckles and another not. It can occasionally be a useful visual indicator of recently abnormal flexure of stems forks or limbs (hinting at underlying hollowing), but more so on Chestnut than Sycamore. I think Mattheck's various pubications hint at this.

Craesus latitarsus. Look it up.

Because the law says so. But that wasn't my point. It was about arithmetic. The age of criminal responsibility only matters if Vespasian's statistic strictly said 'prison'. I repeat, I couldn't give a stuff about the subject matter. Whrn anyone who says 'the facts are .... and therefore ...', it does well to check the facts because without them the 'therefore' means nothing.

Not if you assume none of the women have done time. Take a population of say 100 women and 100 men. 7% are convicted criminals. That's 14 people. Now, if you assume all the women are not convicted, then 14 of the 100 men are. That's 14%. About 20% of the population is under 18 and can't go to prison. So 80 of the males can. 14 have. That's 17.5%. Vespasian had it right on the approach to the arithmetic. I couldn't give a stuff about the subject matter. Thought I was losing it up to that point.

Impossible to tell from that picture. Not even definitely a conifer.

No confusion. They do. Quoting from "Trees: Their Natural History" "As a tree grows it gets to a point where the canopy reaches a maximum size. The tree cannot get taller, owing primarily to water needs (Chapter 6), and the side branches cannot grow longer because they become too expensive to support. So the number of leaves a tree can hold becomes more or less fixed, which means that the tree’s food production also becomes fixed. But each year the tree needs to add a new layer of wood under the bark, and as the tree gets bigger the amount of wood needed to coat the whole tree goes up each year, just like putting together a set of Russian dolls where each new doll on the outside has to be bigger. Moreover, as the tree gets bigger the amount of food needed for running the tree (respiration) increases, rising to two thirds of the sugary income in a mature tree. The tree then becomes like a bank balance where the income (food) is fixed but the outgoings (respiration and new wood) keep rising. The tree compensates for a time by producing narrower and narrower rings of wood but there comes a point where they cannot get any narrower. Something has to give, which usually means the loss of the topmost branches, which are under most water stress. The result is a stag-headed tree, so named for the antler-like dead branches sticking out of the top of the canopy. This is the start of the end because losing branches means fewer leaves and so less new wood, and the beginning of a downward spiral."

Android... yeuch. I was at the seadisde at the weekend and I tried out my new receiver, I got quite a good OTISS reading, it said I was sitting on the dock of the bay. Erm...

I don't think it's a hypothesis, more a debating point. But I'd say many trees would live much longer if we didn't mess them about. They're all individuals, though, with minor genetic variations that sort the weak from the strong, and those that can adapt to changing environments from those that can't. And trees die of old age when they can't maintain themselves by an ever-thinning annual increment. If a naturally occurring compression fork doesn't finish them off first

Agreed on the sentiments, but the thing that kills trees around here is people. With chainsaws. A few of them couldn't spell TPO, nevermind advise on the implications of one.

The Guidance says that When considering an application the authority is advised to: assess the amenity value of the tree or woodland and the likely impact of the proposal on the amenity of the area; consider, in the light of this assessment, whether or not the proposal is justified, having regard to the reasons and additional information put forward in support of it; consider whether any loss or damage is likely to arise if consent is refused or granted subject to conditions; consider whether any requirements apply in regard to protected species; consider other material considerations, including development plan policies where relevant; and ensure that appropriate expertise informs its decision. So I suppose it matters a little what reason has been given for removal. But not much. And one has to bear in mind that removal of a dying tree would give rise to a replanting requirement. Allowing removal in the knowledge that replating will follow would I suspect be a persuasive consideration for a Council. The broad answer is that the Council must and can take a lot of other things into consideration than the reasons given for the application. The term 'material considerations' is used in a relatively narrow sense in Planning law, but if its meaning extends outwith planning law here, it means anything that's relevant and important enough to be important, and could be anything at all that meets that vague test. A prosecution for pre-application damage or destruction of the tree due to root burial would not die with the tree. Quite the opposite, probably. Such a prosecution could be under indictment for 'wilful' damage or destruction. And there would have to be a public interest in prosecuting. If there was a record of poor condition of the tree before burial and if its natural demise was inevitable, and/or the proof of wilfulness is going to be problematic, the Council could do a lot worse than consent and require replanting, because prosecution would be pointless. If you're hinting that the Council's consideration of the application might be swayed by its wariness of capitulating to loss of the tree, it shouldn't be. The damage (if any) caused burial can't be undone. As long as the Council has evidence of condition prior to consenting to removal, prosecution and replanting are two separately pursuable matters. It seems to me the Council shouldn't take into account the threat of prosecution when considering the application. I'd go as far as to say it's not a 'material' consideration. I rather think it's an immaterial one.

For the fungi anoraks out there... I just came across this snippet about Oyster mushrooms, which is new to me and pretty amazing (see last paragraph). https://scottishwildlifetrust.org.uk/2013/12/the-world-is-your-oyster-mushroom/