daltontrees

Worth considering red alder

I could do with a hand measuring trees as part of a survey I'm doing. I just need the trees tagged, plotted and the DBH, height and spreads recorded on a hand-held. I will be assessing the tree risk ans suitability and management requirements. So, no certificates are required (although familiarity with the measurement principles in BS5837 would help), I just need someone who is technically good, systematic and doesn't make mistakes or cut corners. The main locations are Galashiels, Selkirk, Melrose and Kelso. All equpment will be provided, and a bit of tuition, but you'd have to work mostly on your own, with me nearby for occasional questions. There will be an informal opportunity to ask questions about tree risk and management principles, so it may suit someone wanting to get a taste of commercial survey work. Pay depends on whether you can get to locations yourself or have to be picked up. I don't want quality compromised for speed, but I'll pay extra for a decent number of trees getting done a day. Please send private message if you are interested.

And the TOs were probably told to round up.

Sometimes there is no basal diameter, just stems coming straight out of the ground and spreading all-roads. Willows come to mind. Lime coppice regrowth. A few Lawsons etc.

That's probably me that has appeared to over-complicate. But that misses the point. By trying to simplify RPAs, Annex D makes it more complicated than it is, and introduces unnecessary errors. Personally I think it's pants that 5837 starts off from a presumed circular RPA and then requires justification for deviation from a circle. It should require justification of circles, particularly since in nature these circles never happen. Biut it sits the box-ticking processes of planning for there to be circles, and opens the door to pseudo-arboriculturists. The only beings inconvenienced are the trees.

It sounded fine, and I could see nothing about it to suggest it was an unacceptable risk. There was no apparent opening in the stem. Unfortunately for the advancement of arboricultural understanding, this tree will be left for about 5 years before anyone pays it any more attention than to have their dog 'visit' it.

Nope, I was there. The original post was about arriving at a RPA radius. The area is a pretty useless quantity to know unless you are planning to deviate from the default circular RPA. So the key thing in this posting was the RPAr. Annex D calls this the 'Radius of nominal circle" ('RoNC'). In all cases in Annex D the single stem diameter is exactly 1/12th of the RoNC. But as subsequently mentioned, the RPA is rounded to the nearest m2. This is necessary because the area is always pi x (RPAr)2, which can never be a whole number. I have never used Annex D, nor do I intend to because I don't need to. RPAr = 12 x DBH. And RPA = pi x (RPAr)2. Then I do the rounding at the end, manually or by Excel. The discrepancy caused by rounding relative to calculation is greatest for small values of DBH and RPAr. The greatest is for RPAr 0.90, where the error is 17%. This error disappears to a trivial 0.04% by RPAr 15.00. I don't see that 5837 directs the user to round the DBH up or down to the nearest 25mm. As has been said, this is inconsistent anyway with Clause 4.4.2.6 which says to record the DBH to nearest 10mm. For completeness, the greatest error that could be caused by rounding the DBH to nearest 25mm would be rounding 85mm actual DBH up to recorded 90mm, then rounding this up to 100mm to use Annex D. The true RPA would be 3.26m2, but Annex D gives 5m2. A whopping 53% error (hmm)!. Clearly Annex D will be useful if you don't have a calculator but just as clearly (to my pedantic mind) interpolation is expected or at least possible. And in hindsight it would be better if Annex D used intervals of DBH 10mm. I have put one together quickly if anyone wants it (attached). alt annex D.xls

This is a rather puzzling cherry stem. At first sight I thought it loked like a basal graft and another graft at 2m. But close up it doesn't look like grafts. Anyone got any ideas what's going on?

Slight clarifiction, over 5 stems you use the average diameter, square it, multiply this by teh number of stems and then take the square root of that. The method in the current BS relies on finding the total cross sectional area of all the stems added together, then finding the equivalent single stem diameter for that cross sectional area. The 12.5x 'rule' is then applied to that hypothetical diameter to find the RPA radius.

The legislation appears clear on this "Where consent is granted ... such consent shall be valid for a period of two years beginning with the date of its grant". It can be added that "A grant of consent... shall (except so far as the consent otherwise provides) enure for the benefit of the land to which the order relates and of all persons for the time being interested in it. " There is nothing in the legislation to suggest that the newer refusal negates the consent. Any analagous planning situations result in compensation being payable. It appears to me legelly possible for a consent and a refusal to overlap without contradiction. There could be genuine reasons why felling this year is OK with the Council now but not next year, for example a new policy coming into effect or a Local Plan review. But you shouldn't have to speculate why. You have a consent and it can be used without penalty until it expires.

It could be a case of Phytopthora alni, but I haven't confirmed any cases myself so I am just going on what I know of it from various sources. Try the Forestry Commission info. Maybe share your findings with us here if you follow it up?

I don't think it's Goat Willow, I'm pretty sure it's Salix cinerea Grey Sallow, which is dioecious and the one in the picture is the female. Find a male, put it upwind and pretty soon you'll be over-run with offspring.

The wirst thing is that it would fail to get Bulding Warrant and if already built would have to be demolished without compensation. It has happened. So unless the design complies with Building Regs wherever you are it could be hard to show compliance unless you have access to the original designer's calcualtions of U values, load bearing structure etc.

I wouldn't fancy trying to chase a cut with one of those. 'American' can be funny, I see they advertise that that little gizmo "can fit easily into your pants". Ouch. The one in the museum is about 7 foot long.

As spotted recently in the agrucultural museum. Anyone ever used one?

More specifically Wild Service = S. torminalis Bastard Service = S. thuringiacia True Service = S. domestica Service tree of Fointainbleau = S. latifolia At your Service...

The Prescriptions Act does not apply to Scotland, and arguably there is no right to light or buildings up here. And although the Act is helpful in England, it did not create rights of light it merely clarified and shoprtened the prescriptive period. There are many differences between the right to light at common law and the analsgus right to light over high hedges, but there are three essentially important ones. First the latter covers rights to light in gardens too. Secondly the latter doesn not cover non-residential buldings like workshops. Third the common law right is to perhaps as little as a fifth of the light levels tha the British Standard deems appropriate for adequate daylighting. The 'mathematical equations' are not really mathematical, they are derived form complex modelling of BS thresholds and then rounded very substantially upwards by political will. The guidance thus generated does not translate well to Scotland, as anyone that has noticed that our latitude is different will appreciate. Your choice of words "a high hedge may not be only from evergreen and semi-evergreen individuals, but deciduous broadleaved ones, too." is a bit unfortunate, as I am embroiled in 2 appeals just now concerned with an almost exclusively Larch high hedge. And even in England I must point out that high hedges need only be predominantly evergreen or semi-evergreen they can be quite substantuially deciduous and still fall within the Act. Of course a thah piont the guidance, which is derived from equating their light-obstructing properties to those of buildings of the same shape, falls apart. As I think would any common law case asserting a right to light through a tree. Perhaps that's part of the reason it's never come to court.

All wasted on me since I have absolutely no idea what "crushing it" means.

The marchmellow says it all! Can anyone imagine a situation where a nuisance would be actionable but would not give rise to foreseeable substantial harm or damage to the tree owner if self-abated by a neighbour? Or vice versa? Or maybe it's as simple as this. Whether something is actionable only makes the difference between a neighbour (i) self-abating and not recovering the expense of doing so or (ii) asking a court to order the tree owner to do it at the tree owners expense? The question of risk to the tree owner would therefore be an academic one, in the first example the giving of notice and the foreseeability of harm being incumbent on the neighbour, and in the second example being implicit in a court order. This was what I thought earlier while Heather pestered me for emoticons. I should have said so.

It occurred to me that someone working on the branch removals had been wearing spikes when they shoudn't have been.

My daughter Heather wants me to do some smileys here, so here they are, chosen by her.

Ahhh if it were that simple.... There is ancient common law in Scotland that would direct the courts in favour of the tree owner if the neighbour had damaged it out of spite, but I can see it being hard to prove spite. At least it demonstrates that since roman law you can't be an a*se and get away with it. But more basically, I can see a case coming along someday where the courts will be forced to strike a balance between the right to self-abate by the neighbour and the tree owner being allowed fair warning of an impending hazard (risk). That is to say if a neighbour wants to cut back roots and should reasonably have foreseen that the consequence would be failure of the tree and harm or damage to the tree owner or his property, he would be negligent to cut the roots without first having given the tree owner notice of the likely risk arising. The duty of care we read about often isn't just a consequence of land ownership (that is just a special case of it), it's because we all have to act reasonably to everyone else in everything we do everywhere or run the risk of being found negligent if something goes wrong. The dichotomy between right to self-abate and killig the tree is unresolvable as far as I can see. I pressed the issue recently on a debate on UKTC and hypothesised a servitude/easement prescriptive right of having tree roots in your neighbour's land. It is of course a legal impossibility and no such right exists. No-one disagreed with me, and while that in itself doesn't prove anything there were comments to the effect that it is probably unresolved as yet in case law. My current advice to parties in such situations is that the neighbour should foresee harm/damage, give notice to the tree owner firstly requiring abatement and if no action is taken (after a reasonable time has elapsed) secondly warning of the foreseeable consequences of intended self-abatement. However tree law stands, I think that this model of behaviour would satisfy the basic tests of reasonability and form the basis of a defence. I would go further and suggest that there cannot really be any other competent solution in ordinary circumstances. And I would love to hear someone explain otherwise. For me it is the last great quandry of tree law, and it would be nice if it could be resolved without a fatality to bring it to court. But it would be for anyone following this suggestion to satisfy themselves as to its soundness, I am not a lawyer and like anyone trying to be helpful on Arbtalk I cannot be held responsible for people taking up suggestions.

No court decisions on this so far that I know of, but it will be a very helpful decision when it comes along.

It's a pity so many girls are more like C+3.

The article is Webber H. J. (1948). “Rootstocks: their character and reactions,” in The Citrus Industry, Vol. 2 eds Batchelor L. D., Webber H. J., editors. (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press; ), 69–168. But the illustration is all over the net.f