daltontrees

If anybody in the glasgow area is going to the AGM and wants a lift or is offering one, please let me know.

It's not that bad.

You can get decent images by pointing your phone camera down the microscope lens. Yes my pictures on the 4th page of this thread were taken with a camera pointed down the eyepiece. Focusing and alignment at higher magnifications can be a real problem though.

Big question. Depends what you are wanting to look at. That looks like a decent microscope, so you have loads of options. Near the beginning of this thread I tried to explain the difference between reflected and transmitted light microscopy, but maybe I was too technical about it. A simpler way to explain it is that reflected light is like looking at a painting and transmittred light is like loooking ata stained glass window. For the latter you need thin thin samples, and stains can be indispensable, as can be a microtome. And carrots (more on that another time). But if you are keen to get going then reflected light is easy. You can literally put anything under the microscope that will fit, and focus on it. There's a lot to be said for just shovign stuff under, seeing it ina whole new way abut also thinking 'that's not quite as good as it could be, what can I do to improve it? Better light, better direction of light, flattening it with a coverslip? Just go for it. Really fgood easy starting points that are rewarding are insects, postage stamps, leaf surfaces, feathers, fungal pore surfaces, christmas tree needles off the floor, old film negatives, fungal spores, the edge of a ruler (which is good because it gives a true idea of how close you get with a microscope). Anything is worth a try. Reflected light is easiest, tehre's little preparation required, but it will only be good at low magnification. Just go for it. Transmittee light is a world of pain, frustration, expense, endless extra equipment and materials, squandered time. I hope I can get to the point soon of helping people get into transmitted light microscopy (can I call it TLM for short, and call reflected light microscopy RLM?) but I think it will need me to get my microcope out and take pics and make videos (coming soon). RLM, a trip to the best art gallery you will ever visit. A camera is for sharing, nice eventually but not at all needed for understanding.

Can anyone help with the ID of this shrub? This is the only picture I have. Bright greeen stems, acuninate leaves. Flowering here in December.

By the way, the small field of view is a bonus when using a digital eyepiece, since the latter only looks at a very small part of the field of view on my swankier microscope. One of my first experiments will be to take photos (at huge resolution) of various pats of the field of view then using stitching software (I use 'Hug-In') to join them and build up a montage of very high quality. I am even thinking of geting a 0.25 or0.5x eyepiece adapter to compensate for the small size of the digital coverage.

That sounds interesting. I have found already that photographs can be a bit disappointing and I came to realise that while using a microscope one is constantly adjusting the fine focus to aid with a 3d understanding of structure even in very thin (15 micron) sections. I can imagine spirogyra is perfect for the digital layering technique. In geology it is common to focus through the specimen and to wathc te progression of aslight line of brightness from a material of one refractive index to another refractive ndex of an adjacent mineral. This is a useful diagnostic technique, and I will have to see if it can be used for plant tissue. If you have polarisers yuo are quids-in since the cellulose of cell walls has a decent index, which it loses if degenerated by decay, and this can eb seen readily in cross polarised light (the cell walls go black). Once I get my set-up back in use, I will try and illustrate this.

Gary, did I ever put picrures up on Arbtalk of how to make your own microtome from (literally) nuts and bolts? I can't remember if I did. I made one and photographed the process.

So is this the one you've bought? I really regret not getting a trinocular. Let me know if you want to borrow some prepared slides.

I used to have that exact microscope until 2 years ago, it was the same one I used for geology at Uni in the 80s. Rotating stage and polarisers, really good light control. The field of view was a bit small but there's always loads of eyepieces and interchangeable objective lenses on ebay so it could have been pimped a bit. A hefty lump of metal, I recall.

Hmmm.. that picture pretty much proves that the OP's is not Umbrella Pine.

I'd love to get in to this more. A couple of years ago for various reasons I had to put all my microscope stuff away for a while and I sensed a half-hearted interst on Arbtalk anyway so it's still stored away. I got it all out temporarily recently to help someone on a project but it wast do with geology thin sections or else I would have stuck it on here for interest. Hopefully by about February I'll be ready to roll again. Will then be able to bore everyone endlessly with chat about sieve plates, tracheids, cork cambia, vascular bundles... oooh I'm getting all hot and bothered just thinking about microscopy.

My money's on Macedonian Pine Pinus peuce. It is recorded as havig short needle varieties and to have stunted cones (of the size described here) in marginal growing conditions. Plus resinous cones. If so, good find.

Don't think so, P.c. takes decurrent gill attachments to an extreme.

Good to see AA replying here. I am still unclear on why the AA HQ doesn't organise courses up here when the branch subsequently manages to do it viably. Do we get courses that the rest of the UK doesn't, or do we do the legwork to get AA courses elsewhere added on to the road trip? Anyway, if I was up in Inverness I'd be mre fed up about all this than I am, as I can just about make it down south now and again. But for me it's not about courses, it's about inclusion and coverage, to develop a pan-UK voice. Trees are the same up here as they are down there, and attitudes to them are too. The AA tries to be a lot of things at once and cannot always succeed, but it says it is the voice of arboriculture yet it is not embedded in the public conscience and in the corridors of power anywhere near enough to back up that claim. Yet. I accept it IS trying. And must, if it is to raise the profile of tres and carry its members along with it, bringing more into the fold and getting to some sort of critical mass. In Centra Scotland, most of the consultants are ICF. Personally having seen the entry requirements, I'm too busy to take the qualifications. And perfectly competent at PTI?AA Tech/BSc/QTRA etc. It is hard to see how the AA can compete with ICF for out-and-out consultants, except through the rather contrived environmental consultant designation, but for people in my position who have moved on from climbing to professional work, the field is ready for the AA to take a less elite position in supporting the technical grade consultant. CAS almost does it, and if we are to see the AA moving closer towards the ISA (now why does that instinctively worry me?) there is building ready to be done. The AA won't have a legitimate claim to be the UK voice if it doesn't include Scotland, and N Ireland and Wales in all sorts of ways. I don't feel so strongly about Hong Kong, a trip there would be tricky, although I could be there in the same time as it took me to get to Conference in Exeter a few years ago. I am in the AA for the magazine, the journal and to assert the code of conduct, and the very very occasional benefit of member discounts and events. If I had been in it for the representation I wouldn't have joined in the first place. More courses, yes, but in the interests of more inclusion, coherent coverage of the UK, which in most other respects seems to be falling apart at the seams. And if the AA ever wants its publications, policies and website UK-ified, it just has to ask.

I've decided to keep it as simple as possible. I have a Trimble Geo XT for sub-metre work which works in the foulest weather you can imagine. and a Juno SC in an Otterbox for other things and when I am out with my tech he plots and measures with a Trimble and I assess with the Juno or a Dell Axim x51v. The Trimbles use Pocket GIS, and the Dell is just using Excel which is an incredibly fast way of collecting data. Pocket GIS is pretty fast too if you set up your survey templates right, lots of drop-down menuse and delightful predictive text which remembers whole phrases that you use often. But the real joy of the simplicity is that no matter what you out in it comed out as a.csv file which in a few clicks on the PC becomes an Excel spreadsheet. I have this set up to go straight into a reporting template that prints out with no adaptation in pdf form for the schedule. Areas come out a s .shp files. You do need to have Active Sync on your PC, and I suspect this doesn't come with Windows 10. I keep a retro PC with Vista on it which is perfect with Windows Mobile and Pocket GIS Connction. My main PC uses Windows 8.1 which supports Active Sync. Mapping is done with PT Mapper (which until you have used it a few times and realise how simple it is will nearly drive you nuts) a stripped back form of CAD that operates on raster maps or dxfs and produces new layers for the designer's CAD drawings. Just open designer's plan, switch off unwanted layers, import .csv and .shp files and all the trees, shadows, RPAs, spreads and tag numbers appear on the plan. I can come in from survey and in the time it has taken to type this message I have downloaded tree data, produced schedule and plotted trees. Naturally it takes longer if there's something non-standard, like adjusting tree positions or RPA shapes. But the secret for me is to get things right in the field, which is easy with predictive text and drop-down pick-lists. No spelling mistakes, syntax errors are impossible. A handheld that is indestructible and fits in your pocket, 12 hour battery life, sub-metre accuracy. I loathe technologies that won't communicate with each other and now that I have got evertything linked and synced, I aint going to try and fix what isn't broken. As long as Excel exists I am sorted. .csvs are standard to the banking industry so they'll be around for a while. CAD aint disappearing anytime soon. PGIS is constantly being updated and is now available on Android, not that I'll be using that version. Hardware and software cost £2,100 all-in. It took along time to streamline my processes, but I'm there now. It helps to have access to Pear Tech's Survey Designer, which makes look-up tables and conditional tables dead easy to set up and amend. Now ongoing running costs £0. Whole set up paid for itself in a month of surveys.

Hence my lack of confidence in knowing it when I see it, but I occasionally do work down down south.

Stone pine young leaves are only and inch long and damn nearly blue, succeeded by adult leaves about 8 inches long, very forward swept and dead straight. I don't see either. Sorry, but I don't think this is a Stone Pine.

I'm not saying it is At but it could be. Mainly just saying don't rule out Armillaria just because of lack of ring. I don't hav ethe experience of At to know if it succeeds Kd, especially in fruiting mode. I was out in a semi natural feeling woodland yesterday, Lime, Beech, Sycamore, Elm. Stuff of all ages, dead big stuff on the ground, vigorous stuff, weak stuff, and Armillaria was everywhere in rhizomorph form. Crawling all over everything, a regular pitched battle in slow motion with trees beaaring minor wounds mainly sustained by other trees fallign against them. Not one single 'shroom of Armillaria, and I wasn't confident in pinning down the species of Armillaria at all. It only seems to fruit if it's got nothing left to feed on and can't move on by physical contact. I'd say I am not confident of ever having seen tabescens fruiting bodies.

Yes unfortunately the glands are not a perfect diagnostic, somethimes they are subsumed in the leaf and almost invisible, and in individual leaves can be absent completely. but I'm pretty sure you've got a Prunus of sorts, towards the plum department.

Bear in mind though Armillaria tabescens the 'Ringless Honey Fungus'.

No sense of scale to judge the length of the needles.

Looks a lot like plum. I have one out the back of the house on Council land that looks a lot like this, including the mullered top and millions of sprouts. I think the lower leaves on stem epicormics are larger and more cherry-like than in the tree proper. Have a look for hte distinctive cherry glands on the base of the eaves or on the petioles. I had always assumed it was Prunus cerasifera, but not the 'Nigra' variety that is popular as a street tree.

I meant to add, 'or collaborate with other organisations to run joint events'

Paul, as you probably know the AA has just published its "Arboricultural Association Training courses and events for 2018" calendar. There are NO events proposed in Scotland this year. This sort of thing doesn't go unnoticed by people up here. I'm afraid it does add to the sense of wondering if it is worth joining or remaining in the AA. The AA is generally anglocentric anyway. As an aside, I am reminded of the time that I pointed out to the AA that one of its website pages (TPOs and Conservation Areas) needed to be changed to point out that it was only correct for England and that there were differences in law in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland. The pages got changed, for sure. By adding something like 'this page does not apply to Scotland'. Hmmm... If the AA wants to carry Scotland with it, perhaps it should consider subsidising a couple of events that it feels will not be self-supporting?