daltontrees

Seems like one where the Highways Act would be the appropriate one. (2) Where it appears to a competent authority for any highway, or for any other road or footpath to which the public has access— (a) that any hedge, tree or shrub is dead, diseased, damaged or insecurely rooted, and (b) that by reason of its condition it, or part of it, is likely to cause danger by falling on the highway, road or footpath, the authority may, by notice either to the owner of the hedge, tree or shrub or to the occupier of the land on which it is situated, require him within 14 days from the date of service of the notice so to cut or fell it as to remove the likelihood of danger. And it's 62% by land mass. Scotland has almost half as many trees by land mass than England, but Norn Ireland has pitifuly few trees. Just making a typical point that if the OP doesn't say here he/she is, it's always assumed it's England. A couple of posts on Arbtalk have gone wquie far along with advice on law before it transpired that the poster was in Scotland and the advice was therefore, statutorily, guff. Cornwall ot yet having gained independence, I guess you're still part of the 62%.

Well, that depends where you are, the Act only applies to 62% of the UK. The test is that the tree is in such condition that it is likely to cause damage to persons or property. The Act can only bring about "steps for making the tree safe", which could come well short of removing the tree. Now call me pedantic, but you may have rasied expecttions here wrongly. "would use to ensure" is more correctly stated as "could use to try and ensure". Because the Act says the Council 'may' try, not 'will' i.e. it's at the Council's discretion. The Act doesn't apply up here, but nevertheless I have never heard of it being used successfully. It seems to me that the Council would have to incur costs in confirming ownership and carry out an objective assessment of the tree and targets, and may have to respond to a contested notice in the County Court, then get the work carried out at competitve cost, and only then can it try and recover the cost from the person they served notice on. Maybe the lack of up-front funds and the risk of not recovering any or all outlays is enough to put Councils off? Or am I wrong? Is the MPA being used day-and-daily down there on Albion's Plain?

Couple of points here. The 'theft' etc. issue is not relevant here, the tree is already on the neighbour's land and the arising will presumably land there. There's only one question. What did the neighbour agree to? Did he agree to let his tree be cut dwn and all the stuff left on his land? I doubt it. If the customer got his permission to 'remove' the tree, I think most people would assume that means cut it down AND take it away. All this nonsense about 'revenge'... it may seem an unfair situation for the customer to pay for the removal, but that's life, the tree owner is gambling on not having to pay out in negligence. The customer's assessment of the risk is greater, or as Steve aptly pointed out, the owner just can't afford the work just now. And people are often too proud to admit that and I have seen them adopt a fake argument so as not to admit they're skint. I had a pensioner haggle me down from £38 to £35 for a hedge cutting job once, his neighbour was haranguing him abut it. He confided in me eventually, he had no pension, it was a matter of whether they ate that day or not. So to the OP, yes it's unfair. Remove means remove. Probably best not to moralise. Crack on.

Apologies to all, he was not a Kew associate, I don't know where I got that frrm.

One of the is selling in the States for £100.

LeSueur was curator of Kew in early days. I think I have got his book on maintenance of ornamental trees somewhere.

Personally I'd be happy if I never saw a carb again. I hope they fit plastic fuel lines too. Get rid of everything made of rubber that's in contact with fuel. I'd pay extra for a saw that didn't need carb overhaul every few years. Then it's next step, turbo saw, use the engine to inject the fuel faster and faster and faster.... weight of a silky, power of a 880, pull cord like a party-popper. That kind of thing.

Can't be a podicarp, surely? They have needles and the OP pictures are definitely leaves. I kind of get the rationale for Hippophae as a street tree. rhamnoides will get lashed by waves an a horrifically exposed coastline and carry on regardless. Salt not a problem. Strong winds, they don't even blink. In a city heat island with surrounding buildings as windbreaks they probaby think they've died and gone to Buckthorn heaven.

I'd agree with Alnus incana 'Laciniata'. Collins Guide has it down as rare, but recently Barhcams and the like have been stocking them fairly inexpensively.

Could be Hippophae salicifolia 'Streetwise'? Hilliers prodiuced it and say " Has been used successfully as a street tree in London to form avenues and in other fairly tough urban situations where it has performed well. "

No, I reckn it's Acer negundo right enough. Those hanging flowers are very distinctive. Here's a pic of flowers from Wikimedia. And for contrast picture of Walnut flower.

I like the idea of a picus co-op, but I can't think of many people that I would trust to use it. A good way to do this would be to get a group together, one person buys the kit, they all get together for a day's joint playing with it, then the owner rents it out to trusted trained group members and that way he can record condition and function before he sends it out and paperwork can make borrower responsible for return in same condition or for cost of repairs. I'd sign up for such a scheme, but I wouldn't want to take the initial capital outlay hit on it in case no-one else borrowed it off me. Like you, if I had one or I was the main guy in a co-op I'd really be pushing it as a service. The perception that it's a very expensive service is correct in reality, but if using it all the time you might get slck enough to half the price of the service. On a supply/demand basis this might improve uptake and turnover.

Great opportunity Island Lescure. You were the guy on the ground so it's hard to comment on the judgements you had to make. You were still finding roots as thick as a wrist out at 15 and 17m, that must be some tree. And the spread is c.17m. I see you capped the RPAr at 15m for a DBH of 1600mm. Maybe in areas of different climate where rain is less consistent a bigger RPA might be particularly important. My gut feeling is that the area around the tree on the very edge of the crown is partularly important for water. It's called the drip line for a reason. For biger trees, like yours here, the 15m RPAr cap seems to deny the tree this collection area. Maybe the full 1600 x 12 = 19.2m would have been beneficial if building pressure hadn't been there, giving a 2m ring around the crown fro water collection? And speculatively it might be beneficial to reduce the spread artificially by pruning (I see you have anticipated pruning anyway for future buildings near the tree) so that the drip line water contribution is brought closer to the stem. Anway, a good read it was, thanks for sharing it.

Do you have an alternative more relaistic formula based in science? I have never seen justification for 12x, but it usually works, which is justification of a kind, as the trees tend to carry on. It may be too big, but I don't thnk it's too small. Based on the empirical evidence I would disagree that it's 'hugely unrealistic'. I would say 'simplistic' and I'd drop the 'hugely'. I too am happy to be corrected. And what we are dicussing here I think should be thought of as potential crown volume correlating with rooting volume, and whether these are reliably linked by stem diameter. Physiologically ongoing vitality for pollards should reflect potential crown volume, not artificially reduced crown volume, relating that to rooting volume. I still see no rationale for reducing RPA below 12x for pollards. Whether 12x is the right number for all trees is another matter.

I really meant an isolated topping will encourage new wood with increments as big as previous years. But yes I expect regular cyclical pollarding would stunt stem development. And even with small increments, they might not get smaller after re-pollarding. And the question remains, would the stunted stem DBH give an adequate RPA per 5837. I expect so.

Or, don't pollard a veteran that is about to have its rooting area compromised by development?

My post went in a thte same time as Benedmonds. Not trying to stat an argument here, just questioning Paul's 'sound logic' suggestion.

I'm going to give an alternative perspective (otherwise known as disagreeing). Naturally trees have a balance between the below ground and above ground parts, commonly called the root-stoot ratio. The absolute value of the ratio doesn't matter, and I am sure it changes gradually over the lifespan of the tree. The top of the tree puts gases and energy in, the bottom puts water and nutrients in, and the two parts mature together. Cut some roots away, and the tree will immediately try and replace them. Likewise pollarding, remove crown and the tree will bounce back vigorously. The only constant measure of the balance that would be achieved naturally is the stem diameter. And by simplistic methods, this is used to determine the root protection area. The stem is the main plumbing for the tree, up and down. BS5837 assumes its cross sectonal area is proportional to the root protection area. Pollarding doesn't reduce the rooting area, it just forces a new crown to start growing. Reducing the rooting area at the same time as pollarding may reduce the overall growth rate of the tree, but it won't cause the stem to shrink. It will just make the tree unwell and unable to regenerate a crown. So you won't have a pollard, you'll have an ailing stick. A full BS5837 12x RPA is in my view needed to make pollarded trees viable, to constantly try and regain the root-shoot ratio. Push it too far by removing RPA and you are well into the area of not knowing of controlling what willl happen. The stem needs a certain amount of energy in to maintain its older wood as well as create new wood. BS5837 defines RPA in terms of maintaining viability. It doesn't say keeping alive. That's my view anyway. I have never reduced the RPA of a pollard. All of the above is not book learning, it comes (for me) from never ever missing a chance to examine the ring growth pattern of a tree that I have seen standing before it was felled. Newly pollarded trees do not reduce their annual increments, if anything they increase them, with vessel-rich wood rather than fibrous-rich. I think it is more marked in ring-porous species, but I am still observing. So it depends what the objective is. If it's maintaining the tree's vitality, I'd keep the RPA (and then some). If it's sneaking something past planning, by all means try it, but I'd be telling the client that's what I was doing and not promising ongoing vitality. Read pedantically (because that's what TOs and planners seem to do) there is no clear mechanism in BS5837 to reduce the RPA, only modify it's shape. That said, one could infer that parts c and d of clause 4.6.3 anticipate changing the size rather than the shape of the RPA. I have certainly changed it on many occasions based on soil depth. It is after all an imitation of a soil volume. Deeper soil, smaller RPA. As I say, much of this is based at looking at stumps of topped or pollarded trees I've been involved in removing. Te DBH is reflective most of all of potential for water uptake, and that is a reflection of rooting rather than crown. Re-pollard so of thn that that isn't true any more, and you've got a dying tree. I've seen that many times. They succumb to infection too in their weakened state.

Someone has commented they were there for 5 hours.

Hmm. Land owned by Scottish Enterprise, who commented that some trees would need to be felled. Preferred bidder status for redevelopment given to Flamingoland. Treees flattened, then TPO preventing the few surviving trees being felled. Stinks! I know what I think. TPO attached, which includes official justification for TPO, otherwise known as shutting the stable door way too late. 20180321-A3P-TPO-Drumkinnon-Bay_v02-for-website(1).pdf TPO-No-10-of-2018-2018-03-22-Redacted-1.pdf

https://www.dailyrecord.co.uk/news/local-news/police-hunt-men-who-butchered-12255074 Totally bizarre. This area is in full view of Lomond Shores visitor centre etc. which gets 10s of 000s of visitors a week. https://www.google.co.uk/maps/@56.0068717,-4.5929892,420m/data=!3m1!1e3?dcr=0

You mean any trees at 8cm or less DBH don't count? Branches less than 8cm coming off trees that are greater than 8cm DBH surely count? It's "aggregate cubic content", ingoring exemptions.

Good point. Oak is the king of the hazard beam. Bit of a design flaw, that. Not much chance of a mast year on a Poplar though. Some candy floss if it's even fertile.

Tim/David, I have no pics of the branch, it just looked like a standard limb removal as I was groundie for the day, and I didn't see the cracks till it was mostly in teh chipper and the heavier wood was getting ringed up. It was a fairly hefty old Poplar that had been topped severely about 15 years before, and a lower branch had gone mad, it started horizontal and stretched out for about 15 metres, curving progressively to the vertical. The section I have is about 35cm diameter, but it was in a bulge and the rest of the limb was only about 30cm diameter before and after the bulge. The bulge was in the classic hazard beam failure position, on a section about 20 degrees off hrizontal. I've always assumed beam failures are instigated by torsion due to end wind loading, rather than by dead loads.

Neither. It was approx like this in situ...