daltontrees

I like Arbtalk a lot and changing it for chaging sake is in my personal view not particularly pressing, unless it's just a catch-up with current technology. But this questions/answers/voting thing, having just looked at Yahoo Answers for the first and almost certainly last time in my life is too trashy for words. Will it encourage witty and eloquent answers? Yes, probably. will it encourage right answers, not necessarily. Will it improve the standing of arboriculture in the minds of the public and encourage best practice within the industry? I know what I think. In the top 10 yahoo answers today Do Christians understand that Allah and God are the same? Is five too young to let my kid watch the walking dead? Would you marry a man who watches porn? Do you like 80's music? and the best one of all - Why would anyone struggle with depression when God can fix it? I got depressed one day and so I prayed and God made it go away? (24 answers!) Just what Arbtalk needs (not!) Tread lightly, Steve. Coincidentally i heard that the AA is going to put a forum on its revamped website. Maybe worth an enquiry as to overlaps?

I chucked a desk job and took up tree work in my 40s, best thing I ever did. Lost 1 12/ stone, was fitter than when I was 25, and I don't remember ever thinking I wish I hadn't done that. I love being up a tree at 8.30 and watching all the suckers commuting to some battery-hen office while I get ready to be paid for climbing trees, having crack with the guys, messing about with machinery, getting loads of fresh air, loads of exercise and being engaged with nature. Downside is it beats the hell out of you on the wrong side of 50, but plan C (consultancy) is pannig out beautifully.

Please remember I was responding to a specific question namely "So, if the neighbour wants to keep the tree, the development proposal can't be approved?". The thread was started by someone asking about plotting RPAs but as these things go it has drifted in to a general discussion about whether the development should proceed. I was just saying to Kevin that development needn't be prohibited just because a neighbur wants to keep a tree. What would a developer do then? If the tree is not already protected, he could sever the roots to the boundary. Then apply for consent. But say he didn't and the Council refused consent because it valued the tree and thought it would be lost if development was authorised. So What would a developer do then? Sever the roots to the boundary, and then re-apply? This was part of the rationale for me saying "Council'd probably have to TPO the trees." Back to that survey, then. If the OP reported that the volume of soil required for the ongoing vitality of the trees on the embankment had no significant element under and beyond the retaining wall, would a Council question that? Would they prod, scan or airspade the site to disprove the surveyor? Rhetorical questions, but for what it's worth personally based on the photographs I'd be suggesting to the developer that the subsurface constraints on the car park side are minimal. But you've raised an interesting point about off-site conditions (an age-old issue in Planning) but when I think about it trees don't quite behave like other structures and in view of the position on abatement of encroachment I can't see how they can be protected by off-site conditions alone. The consent could be granted with conditions to protect the trees then their owner could just chop them down because the conditions are not binding on him.

I mean can it be used across a strong break in slope like that surely at some point it will not be scanning directly perpendicular to the ground, it will be covering a wedge of ground. See attached. Area A is OK and so is B, but what information can you get for area C, D and E?

Sorry to be a killjoy but that's probably an automatic LOLER failure unless the manufacturer has desinged and certified the harness as being suitable for adaptation in that way. That's not to say you couldn't do it but you'll have nowhere to hide if something goes wrong. Whatever you do don't attach a bridge to the side Ds. It'll drive you nuts if you ever use a wire strop a tthe same time. Actually that doesn't leave any attachment points. The Petzl datasheet for the Avao Sit Fast says modifications are prohibited.

I was thinking more of showing that there are plenty of roots on the other side. Back to the OP, I think the objective is to demonstrate that an asymmetric RPA is appropriate. Can GPR even be used on steep AND level ground?

Air spade sounds OK occsionally, but if it's just a 5837 survey and TCP the onus surely isn't on the developer or surveyor to prove where the roots are? Isnt it just necessary to have sound arb reasons to expect rooting to be non-circular and to portray the RPA accordingly? I don't have the BS handy to give the exact wording, but I'm sure you don't have to prove it. Air spade was (along with ground-penetrating radar) what I was thinking of as being the luxury of a lottery-winner.

Not really a derail. In my case the piling was the only option due to depth and site contamination. But it raises a fair point, could piling be used as a legiyimate way of minimising the likelihood of root damage? Clearlyt hrere would be no point in doing this if a building is going to be put up, but ground beams between piles could work in some situations where only a wall is to be built. I've done something akin to it on a very small scale, basically stopping a foundation on either side of a root, then building up brickwork and building in a RC lintel at ground level and then building the wall as normal on top of it. And back tot eh original posting, I xpect there's no benefit in this sort of way of thinking there because (a) there'll be sod all beneficial rooting in teh car park and (b) there's much more likely and better rooting to be protected on the other side.

I was the developer on a site in the highlands of scotland, we drove piles to 9 metres. About 50 of them. Inside an existing building. You wonder if you're ever going to hit anything solid. It's an expensive open-ended business. But statistically low chance of hitting a major root with a pile.

If the developer has not secured rights to work offsite, there is no new threat to the tree from development. So th development could be approved. But more generally, it can't be assumed that the Council would look for these trees to be retained. At this stage the 5837 survey might just be needed to inform the designers and planners. It's rare and arguably wrong for conditions of consent to relate to things on ground not within the appication site anyway. Council'd probably have to TPO the trees.

This comes up againa and again, especially on UKTC. There is a borad consensus that there is no hard scientific evidence about rooting distribution in situations like this. 5837ers seem a little obsessed with avoiding damage to roots, but what 5837 really says is that you need to establish what volume of soil is needed for teh ongoing vitality of a tree. SO it's as important to establish where it will get support, nutrints, water etc. as where it gets the m from at present. Now obviously if all the roots are on one side and the only soli that will be available after developmentis on the other side, it would be nuts to sever allt the roots and expect the tree to move into the soil. So initially matching the future requirement to the current distribution is of fundamental importance. I'd say if that wall is of any sort of age the three will not be deriving significant benefit from material under the car park but will be deriving important tensile support on that side. The rooting distribution will probably be in all other respects strongly asymmetrical downslope and if so that's the area to safeguard for water and nutrients. If you can get a hold of Tree Roots in the Built Environment, it will ask every question you would eventually ask yourself, but not for want of trying the authors will leave you realising that there is no proof. Without a lottery win to squander on investigations anyway.

I can never rely on the 3 wraps method to be right. Try the one shown on this video, it's less prone (for me) to go wrong but for you you'll see you can pull the bioght out as long as you want before tucking and setting the knot. There's an even easier way to tie it, but it's not so good with mits on. You can cow hitch the ring to the bight, no need to passs the bight back through the knot. Or use a steel screwgate through the bight.

"... if gardeners chip their own woody material to use as mulch they should be very careful to choose only material that is free from honey fungus, because there is a small but measurable risk that even fragments of contaminated wood can infect plants. All parts of plants affected by honey fungus should be destroyed by burning or removing to land-fill, including as much of the root system as possible."

Thanks to everyone for the suggestions. I will look into these. I have got Photoshop, but it's just the 'elements' version, so I'll look ther first to see if it does what I need.

I wuldn't say adaptive growth, it looks more simply like a response to wounding or some other reason for a large area of exposed wood. Even if there's not much or any visible decay this looks like classic Shigo CODIT Wall 4, inching towards occlusion and benefitting meantime from the legendary resistance of Cedar to superficial aerial decay. I'd admit readily that adaptive growth and wound occlusion are close relatives, the rapid growth response is reputedly due to flexure in both scenarios. But in this case it looks like normal flexure rahter than adaptation to changng forces on the tree. Bitut there's only so much you can tell form a couple of pictures. I ma delighted that no-one (so far!) on Arbtalk has said "It's knackerd, great firewood by the way, looks like there's something in the background that might be crushed by the tree's imminent failure, fell it!"

Yep, I have Windows XP, Vista and 8 available. I've just thought, I could upload all my pics to Arbtalk and then download them again. That would compress them:sneaky2:

I wonder if anyone can help? I usually take my job and survey photos at quite high resolution, pictrues are about 1.5Mb each, I never know which ones will turn out to be important for fine detail and zooming right in. But mostly they just end up saved in a folder, gobbling up computer memory. I can compress them one at a time using Microoft Picture Manager, it usually gets pictures down to about 125k, but ti takes ages and I can't imagine ever having time to do them all. But I hear there is such a thing as batch picture managers that let you select hundreds of pictures and at one click it will open, reduce, save and close each one of them. While you can get on with something useful. Has anyone used one of these and do you know where I can get one? Any help greatly appreciated.

It was at ground level. Fair enough, I didnt' ID it. It must have been some other leaf-cutter. If I get a chance to go back and look I will.

That's exactly what the British Standard says to do. Rooting is rarely circular, but it's a good starting point.

I'm happy with that summary of the modus operandi of P. squamosus. It make sense that it operates differenty on different species. When it is seen fruiting on clients' trees and I am doing a risk assessment, the client is usually expecting bad news and although I am comfortable enough advising against tree removal if the infection is slow-moving and/or inconsequential there is rarely the luxury of a climbing inspection and even if there is some sort of decay detection device could be needed to try and quantify the strength of the remaining parts. Again that's not an affordable luxury in most situations, and it's not within my scope of services. Ultimately the risk assessment is coloured as much by prognosis as by diagnosis and by probability considerations including a fairly blunt foreseeability-of-harm recommendation. I don't think I'll ever have the ability to predict exactly how an infection is going to go, but since P.s. correlates well with tree age and wound size I am yet to see a fruiting site completely close over, and recommendations for action can at best suggest postponement of the inevitable. So many times this results in the client just wanting to get the problem dealt with right away, regardless. Thanks for you thought-provoking comments. I will ponder the crucial issue, which right now seems to be whether P.s contributes to the prevention or retardation of CODIT wall 4 formation. I just need a few clients now to pay for climbing inspections or for me to get back on the tools more often.

Yesterday I had a really good close-up look at a Cherry Laurel with some leaves like this. Sure enough dangling from the bottom of more than one leaf was a larva. They were mostly dead, and weren't as plump as the healthy ones, but they were about the right size, colour and form for Vine Weevil (Otiorhynchus sulcatus). There's not many things will tackle Prunus laurocerasus because of the waxy cuticle and high Cyanide content of the leaves, but these guys seem to manage it. The plant'll probably bounce back unless it is being seriously compromised in other ways. That's my guess.

David, I don't have the experience to question either you or Schwartze/Butin, but I have come form a few limitd observations over a good few years on Aesculus and Acer to correlate P.squamosus with fairly rapid deterioration of stems at would positions leading to big big failures and no evidence of any fungal action and no other explanation than progressive weakening by P.s. Whether this is weakening by the killing and consumption of living wood arund the wound or by destruction of the already dead wood I really can't say. But P.s fruiting seems to be a precursor to failure, whatever the strategy.

God stuff, Jon. I note your comment about the rules being 'broken'. I think it is even simpler than you portray it. 5837 clause 4.2.4 says the topographic survey "should record ... the position of all trees within the site with a stem diameter of 75 mm or more ... ". It is absolutely clear therefore that the designer should have this information to hand. The arb adds to this, and if the trees haven't been plotted then he must do it. And it is not that uncommon either to be asked to do this. I did it today for 60 trees on a development site, I was only provided with an OS based site plan. 5837 then says at clause 4.4.2.1 "The tree survey should include all trees included in the topographical survey (see 4.2), as well as any that might have been missed". This really underlines that all trees must be made known to the designer. It then adds that "The trees should be sequentially numbered and, where appropriate, tagged...". And "Trees growing as groups or woodland should be identified and assessed as such where the arboriculturist determines that this is appropriate. However, an assessment of individuals within any group should still be undertaken if there is a need to differentiate between them...". In my mind it is fairly(though not absolutely) clear that the only interpretation of this that stands up to scrutiny is that all the treees have to be looked at, and the only relaxation on the onbligations of the arb is that a single category/sub-category can be given to a group rather than each tree within it. It seems to offer the felxibility to say the whole group is, say, A except trees X, Y and Z which are, say, B. It's a fundamental of 5837 tha the arb should not be guessing which trees are lilely to go and which are likely to stay. If there no possibility of them having to be removed to accommodate a development, the arb should be told this and arguably the trees shouldn't be in the survey at all. Why would they be? In conclusion, I think that 5837 says all trees need to be plotted, numbered, assessed and categorised though not all of them need to be tagged and they can be categorised in groups. And I stand by my question about the Catch 22, how can only the trees that need work be recorded or tagged, if they need to be surveyed really pretty comprehensively befoer recommending teh expense of tree work to a client and accepting liability for any defects that have been missed? I'm sure we've all been asked to do this sort of 'negative survey' before or something like it, but it's not a 5837 survey, even if 5837 is being used as a specification for the data to be recorded. Personally I wouldn't accept such a commision lightly or without some sort of bespoke modification of my duty of care.

A wee addendum, P.squamosus is more parasitic than saprophytic, referring to Fungal Strategies of Wood Decay in Trees ... s.3.3.6.3 p. 89. I'd say it's not going to leave a big wound (or pruning cut) on an Elm alone till it's done, although it may take a while.

Hmm, the more I think about this the more it seems like a Catch 22, how do you know which ones require work unless you survey them all?