daltontrees

2102 Regulations "Exceptions 14.—(1) Nothing in regulation 13 shall prevent— (a) the cutting down, topping, lopping or uprooting of a tree— (vii) so far as such work is necessary to implement a planning permission (other than an outline planning permission..." Therefore outline consent expressly does not trump TPO. No consent trumps TPO until the consent can be implemented, because until then the exemption does not apply. So it's down to the conditions of consent. Any condition that says no work is to be started until blah blah means no work including no tree work. So if the Council has to approve samples of bricks or slates before a start is made, that also literally means no tree work. So the rule is there is no rule, it depends on the conditions on a case by case basis.

I was going to say, veteranisation does have its place. I am involved in a local community woodland, and unfortunately every time the schools organise a bug hunt they find just about nothing as there's hrdly any deadwood. The trees are mostly about 40 years old plantation. There are bats in the area but they are commuting there from a nearby older park. I spent about 2 days looking at about 2,000 trees in the woodland, and I don't think I saw a single potential roost feature. The plan is to deliberately trash a few of the trees, and the Bengtsson et al paper is the sort of planned damage I had in mind plus the creation of a few poles. And some thinning for small clearings to encourage a range of tree ages to develop. I've already built some bat boxes and put them up. Just trying to speed up the process and get this artificial woodland behaving as it will in 100 years' time if left to its own devices.

You've guessed it, making a loop is the answer, I was looking to see how neatly I coud achieve this, and very importantly using a knot that will not bind on loading. Wouldn't want to be stuck on a crag with a bound knot in the middle of my climbing rope.

Maybe Xylaria hypoxolon?

Links worked for me, thanks for these.

That's the Bastard I was talking about.

A lot of limbs removed around 3 to 6m, then big dense crown exposed to wind loads above building ridges causing lots of stem flexing around occluding wounds, so lots of adaptive growth. Seems consistent.

Hi I thought you were long gone, so I didn't reply to your post a week or so ago. I tturns out thatthe situation you describe for what you might need a friction hotch on hte bight is not what I or I think others imagined. Tree work is frequently done frm whaty is commonly called a doubled rope system, but there is anothe popular sysem called single rope. What I suggested using the farrimond was for a doubled rope scenario. Instead you anticipate a single rope scenario. The farrimond would be inappropriate for a single rope system. In effect you want to make a controllable locking device for a single rope systm using a bight of rope. That simplifies the question a lot. You can pretty much ignore all the previous suggestions. The camel hitch is really just a prussik knot, but not using an 'endless' loop of rope. The ability to tie it using a free length of rope was (when I passed my climbing assessment) a mandatory requirement. As such, it's not a lot different from the old-school Blake's Hitch system. But when you load a Blake's or any friction hitch that is tied on a bight the problem becomes clear, only one part of the bight 'bites' and the other does not, and this defeats the purpose of the knot. I see a solution, and I will try it tomorrow and if it works I will photograph it.

Fantastic, thanks!

...which sort of prods a question I have had in my mind for a while. Most of the Ganoderma I see is in private grounds or the tree gets chopped down, so I have never got to see what happens to a 'conk' a long while after you take a slice out of it. Is the last picture showing that the slice removed in the second picture has been replaced by new material or did you replace the slice and it has 'taken'. And/or do you think the removal of the slice 'killed' the conk? I know 'killed' is not the right term, but hopefully you get what I mean.

Spotted yesterday on a fallen tree (not sure of species, either Horse Chestnut or Sycamore). I'm not quite sure what the fungus is (and amn't going to make a fool of myself guessing here), but it has cracking guttation, varying from wet light brown, to sticky dark brown, to firm grey. Any guesses, and is guttation common for this species?

Ahh fair enough, that does look Sorbus. Although by some perversion of nature (as I noted this summer on a 200 tree survey involving a lot of Sorbus) Whitebeam bears suckering leaves like yours that if you found them in the crown you would safely take to be Swedish Whitebeam or Bastard Service.

I worked all last winter on a site straddling the welsh english border, and the planning regime changed from field to field. Head-hurting. I just about manage to keep on top of it all. The scottish set-up used to be better than England until the 2012 Regs, you guys have pretty much caught up now.

Unfortunately it's not that simple. There is much more in primary legislation than in Regulations up here compared with England, and the legislation.gov website still doesn't have the changes to the 1997 planning Act made by the 2006 Act, so a full manual merger is required. I have done this if anyone wants a copy. The out of date Act probably still refers to the now repealed 1975, 1981 and 1984 Regulations.

As I already said, it depends on what country you're in.

Metal on metal is generally bad, but this arrangement puts both krabs under shock torsional loads or which they are neither designed nor rated. Just tell groundies to hurry up. How hard can it be to unclip a sling frm a krab?

It wasn't you I didn't follow, it was the confusing picture appearng to show Amelanchier leaves on a supposed Sorbus stock. We posted almost simultaneously.

Growing Amelanchier Lee Reich lreich at hvc.rr.com Fri Nov 6 14:44:27 EST 2009 "Grafting has not been a very satisfactory method of juneberry propagation. Grafts often take on rootstocks of other genera, such as mountain ash, hawthorn, and other members of the rose family, but the grafted plants sometimes stop growing. Stocks generally used have included Cotoneaster acutifolius, C. bullatus, Sorbus intermedia, and S. aucuparia. Amelanchier alnifolia is apparently the juneberry most compatible with other genera. Plant juneberries grafted onto other genera low enough in the ground to allow the juneberry scion to root. The rootstock, in this case, acts as a temporary nurse root, but may have the unfortunate habit of continually sending up sprouts. Crataegus arnoldiana as a juneberry rootstock reputedly shuns this bad habit. "Interestingly, one Amelanchier species is not always graft compatible with another. When grafting a juneberry scion onto juneberry roots, choose a nonsuckering clone for roots or you will constantly be finding shoots thrown up from the rootstock. "Lee Reich, PhD"

A good wqy to think of the decision is assessing separately how likely the tree is to fail, how likely something or something will be there directly beneat in nthe conditions under which it would fail, and how serious the harm or damage would be. So the VTA part is only the first of three factors. The Ganoderma could co-exist with an Oak for decades. If ther is good vitality, no evidence of rootplate movement, there is evidence of adaptive growth I'd saay there is nonly a slightly elevated likelihood of failure compared with a normal oak of the same size. How serious would the harm be? Wold the whole tree snapo at the base? Probably not, it's rare and the tree would have to be really really and obviously goosed. Would ti shed a branch instead? Unlikely if it is of good vigour. What's it going to land on? Shrubs in an unused area of a garden? All in all, it looks likie a low risk. I daresay in a PTI assessment you'd be jsstified in recommending it be left alone ansd re-assessed in 2 or 3 years. As others have said, state the evidence and relate the decision to it and you can't be criticised if it is a reasonable decision. There's no right answer, although you'll get failed for arriving at a wrong one and/or not explaining why or not basing it on what you have recorded about the tree and the situation.

Spruce Pirate is in Scotland, so the advice about multistemmed treees doesn't apply. At least I can't see any scottish equivalent to the english Reg 15(2)(a).

The legislation says 1.5m. "Above the natural ground level" in England, "above ground level" in Scotland.

I don't follow, the leaves are from the rootstock the way it looks. They look Amelanchier-like. This has occasionally been grafted successfully onto Sorbus, but I don't know about the other way round. Amelanchier buds are Beech-like.

Geo TX virtually idestructible, great! With the right software. GPSs don't draw maps. And Geos or really most things that would be good for trees wouldn't be muchg use for telling you to turn left at the next junction.

Easy, cut it down and count the rings!

I have long thought that, and I am sure I don't need to tell you all the positive benefits that would arise. I can't start a campaign from up here, we have our own difficulties with politicians who are largely clueless and a local authority culture that as far as I can tell has little conviction about its protection of trees.