daltontrees

Must have been too long! Keep 'em bite-sized if you will.

It's free, I believe, un til you want to save or print any of your work and at that point you get 30 days trial then you have to pay to keep it. So, it's free to play with on-screen but you have to pay for the useful bits or else you lose all the work when you switch off your computer.

The answer to your question, in my view, is to ask the customer whose responsibility it is. There is precedent for contractors being prosecuted as well as or instead of tree owners. Advise the customer that notification is needed and ask him if you are to do it or him.

Fluorescence - hmm, I didn't quite take all this in as a 'fact'. Whereas it is undoubtedly a complicated business, I souught out my own practical undestanding of this. Thanks to an article by Maxwell and Jonhson (2000) I seem to be getting my head round it. I will paraphrase that article. But first a brief definition of PSII. It is the first chemical stage in photosynthesis. The front-end of how trees convert light energy to sugars, using green stuff (chlorophyll). Chlorophyll fluorescence gives information about the state of Photosystem II. It can tell you the extent to which it is using the energy absorbed by chlorophyll and the extent to which it is being damaged by excess light. It does this by indirectly measuring the flow of electrons through PSII. This flow is indicative, under many conditions, of the overall rate of photosynthesis. Chlorophyll fluorescence gives us the potential to estimate photosynthetic performance, under conditions in which other methods would fail, in a manner that is almost instantaneous. PSII is also accepted to be the most vulnerable part of the photosynthetic apparatus to light‐induced damage. Damage to PSII will often be the first manifestation of stress in a leaf. Chlorophyll fluorescence allows some degree of prediction or diagnosis of this at early stages. A slightly dodgy analogy (mine, blame no-one else To me it is akin to diagnosing problems with machinery like chainsaws. If you can get a saw running it is OK when it's warmed up even if it is continuing to do damage to itself. But often all the problems show early signs when cold-starting it. Weak compression, a puff of black smoke, a faltering start etc. Modern chlorophyll fluorescence is like being able to do a cold-start diagnosis while the saw is already hot and running. As such it seems to be a great improvement on lab techniques that were previously needed. A childish explanation Daughter just asked me at breakfast what chlorophyll fluorescence is. After a few seconds I said it's a way of telling if a plant is getting unwell even if it looks green and healthy. To be honest, that explanation will do me too for now. Gary, I couldn't understand your equation "variable fluorescence- Fv= Fm¬-F0". Is there wrong symbol in there? Should it be "variable fluorescence- Fv= Fm-F0"?

For sure, Tom, but a lot of them are not very good, and you can be sure that they know almost nothing about trees even if the pretend to, their job is usually to unsettle you, trip you up, find inconsistencies in waht you say and limitations to your knowledge. Always telling the truth and not rising to their provokation and admitting to the limitations of what you know works every time. Judges like credible witnesses and will prefer them to smart-asses and the client's case will be aided as a result. I suppose the consistent good advice in all things professional applies here, as advocated by Jon Heuch earlier. If you're not up to it, don't do it, you will get busted.

I personally think it's quite the opposite, you're saying 'use me, not the competition, because I've got imagination, flair, ambition, pride in my company, I'll do a better job than the rest and I won't let you down because It want to create an enviable reputation'. Then put it on your van, truck, letterhead, business card, workwear, baseball cap, pens, post-it-notes. Or go down the H landscaping route and wait for discerning customers not to phone.

Honestly, 5 minutes! I use Paint so often that I am super-quick with it. Brilliant wee programme, I dread losing it on my next computer OS upgrade.

Yes, probably best to stick to providing evidence rather than being (or worse, pretending to be) an expert witness.

I would agree with your disagreement. Ambition, success and confidence are intimate bedfellows.

I was involved in one last year, the vandal nearly got a custodial sentence but got off with a lng stretch of community service yet. It aint over yet, and the criminal case may move on soon to a civil case. It involved some heavy-duty valuation arguments. I disagree with everyone on here that's saying don't get involved. Tell your clietn what your abilites and limitations are and let them decide if yu would be the right kind of representation. Then get a brief and stick to it. The case might be complicated but the usiness of getting involved or not isn't.

Nicely done but everyone's got one like that. Just my opinion but you won't stand ot at all witha logo like that. I thought you were on to something with your original logo. I agreed with the comment about the garden looking like railway sleepers (concrete ones!) but I muucked about with it a bit (see below) and if you're design ethos is to integrate vegetation, fencing and other garden furniture and the building materials of the clietn's house in a pallette of colours, this might say it, as it hints at decking, lawn, paths or slabbing and whatever black is (could be the street). I skewed the perspective sideways because straight-on did look a bit Habitat Homes-ish. I widened the H and L in the building to make the proportions look a little more relaistic, but I thought it was clever to use the spaces as you did to get 3 windows and a door. My version is a bit rough, I spent 5 minutes on it, but if I was you I'd work on that idea. Just my opinion, good luck with it. If your logo shows imagination, people wioll seek you out. Unimaginative logo, unimaginative landscaper.

I couldn't see the different shaped leaves from the photo, but M. alba 'Pendula' is a good shout. Particularly the young smooth pink bark. It's pretty common as a lawn specimen.

I did say cultivar 'Youngii' whch has a variety of manifestations some of which have pink stems, large leaves when juvenile, more entire leaf margins than pendula and more akin to utilis, plus white twigs. Looking at the picture again I see twigs at the top which are almost white. The stem is pink. I may be wrong, but I'd put money on it not being Beech.

Sorry to have to disagree witht eh beech camp, but I reckon this is Betula pendula 'Youngii'

I'm confused. If Alnus can create better plant growth conditions because it can fix Nitrogen (with F. alni), why does it create Phosphorus poor conditions? i.e. if it accumulates both N and P why and how does it make N available to other plants but not P? Sorry, complex question, but I don't have access to Jakobsen et al.

Not quite the same, both have had substantial limbs removed. Am I Imagining it or is there a strong correlation between the wounds and the blackening? The Filed Maple seems to have some callus formation over the wound but if cambial activity is weak the limb removals would be disastrous for the tissue just below them.

There's a S. sargentiana at Harcourt Arboretum I saw in teh summer. Here's pics. It was grafted onto what I think was plain S. aucuparia. Hence the last two pics showing suckering foliage typical of S. a.

Strictly, Taphrina betulina.

Can be anything from light yellow to dark chestnut brown, even on the same twig, can be smooth to downy (but not onteh same twig).

Sure looks like goat willow to me. Complete with Melampsora leaf rust (Willow Rust).

Sorry if I seemed rude, but the guy did ask about pruning and the whole job looks like it would only take about an hour.

Not quite what I was thinking, the Highways Act doesn't apply in Muirhead. We don't even have highways up here, we have 'roads', and the legislation is the Roads Scotland Act 1984 and unlike the english Act it doesn't allow for the recovery of costs. Where a hedge, tree or shrub overhangs a road so as to ... (b) obstruct or interfere with ... (ii) the light from a public lamp ... the roads authority may, by notice served either on the owner of the hedge, tree or shrub, or on the occupier of the land on which it is growing, require him within 28 days from the date of service of the notice to carry out such work on the hedge, tree or shrub as is necessary to remove the cause of danger, obstruction or interference. I just noticed the word 'overhangs', so if the tree blocks a street lamp that is not within the public road, it cannot come within the Act because it does not overhang the road. Strictly speaking ...

As far as I can see, unless the Council cuts a tree back form a lamp due to imminent danger there is no financial penalty for not complying with a notice.

I have worked on a few. Around Glasgow almost every open-grown Gunnii was damaged badly by a cold winter in 2009, and many were finished off by another cold winter in 2010. I couldn't prove it but the ones that fared better had vigorous growth beforehand and a decent crown size. I'd go further and speculate that those that had been topped before and re-grown had relatively thick stems for their crown volume. A few did come back with juvenile foliage but these struggled for a year then gave up. I can't see from the pictures but yours looks like it's been 'done' before. A long cold winter is being forecast by the Met Office, so cutting back hard now won't leave the tree much chance. Personally I wouldn't be suggesting that the pruning required by the client is anywhere near best-practice, but since it has been ordered by the Council there are few alternatives. Leaving the protion of crown that is behind the lamp is a possibility, encouraging the tree to grow inwards into the garden. But maybe they want a more compact tree anyway, so cutting it back is what should be done. If you can leave long stubs on each substem rather than taking it back to one big knuckle it might be OK. What was the old rule of thumb, a length of 3 to 4 times the diameter of the cut substem? Maybe just warn the customer that there is a significant chance of the tree not fully recovering?

I just meant are you looking for advice on pruning or whether to get involved in the job.