Matthew Arnold

Whilst on my day off (odd to have a day off on a tuesday i know) i decided to take some pictures of the big Oaks on one of my sites known as Stour Meadows. It is a floodplain with a big attenuation lake (flood alleviation pond). It has some history about it, as the Somerset and Dorset Joint railway line ran through there. We have a 60+ year old hedgerow, although the trees in the hedgerow arent 60+ years old it is still well established. Most of the Oaks are English/Common (Quercus robur) but we also have a pair of Turkey Oaks (Quercus cerris) and a small group of Holm Oaks (Quercus ilex). Here are the order of the pics: Pics 1,2,3 and 4 - Common Oak with butress root flares. No sign of fruiting bodies but base has been dug out by bunnies. Going to have "sunseeker" limb removed to attempt to re-balance. Pics 5,6 and 7 - Common Oak with small cavity and root flairing at base. Leaves are small in the summer and is deadwooded each year. When it dies it shall become a deadwood monolith. Pic 8 - Large Turkey Oaks. Both very healthy. Crown cleaned a few months back to remove rubbing branches. Pics 9, 10,11,12,13,14,15,16, 17 and 18 - Common Oak with fruiting bodies in between butress roots. Very obvious butress flares but otherwise healthy. ( Any ID on the fruiting bodies would be helpful) Pics 19, 20, 21, 22, 23, 24 and 25 - Pair of Common Oaks. No fruiting bodies. Very Health. One tree lost several limbs in 1980s storm when neighbouring Oak slid down the side. Bat roost used by Pipistrelle and occasionally Noctule Bat P.S. Soz for huge amount of images to sort thru.

Winds werent too strong in Dorset. Although just chatting to a friend of mine who is currently working over in the USA on the East coast we may have a strong low pressure on the way. It was packing winds of 120 mph and sometimes more. So hopefully that one will head north and go into the arctic or else we are all going to be extremely busy.

When i am in the area next (wed) i shall get some pics of a beech with kretz and merip that snapped off clean (looked like a tree surgeon had cut it off but had infact snapped in the wind). We had a tree surgeon come and coronet it for us. It looks so much more natural. He buried the bar in to the trunk in an upward direction for bats. Just gotta get in there and tidy up the brash.

Its been reduced hard some time in its life. Might be worth reducing it to the original points. Other than that its a healthy tree.

Teak or African Teak (Iroko). We use Iroko on the rails for the trailway bridges. Nice and hard with a good oil content but not as expensive as Teak.

Beech?

Soz for the derail. Would 255s fit on 235 rims? We currently have 235/85r16 on our 110 and just wondered when the tyres wear out would 255s fit on the same rims.

BBC News - Rock guitarist Gary Moore dies

Second pic looks like Ganoderma lucidium Third pic looks like a combination of Willow Bracket and Ganoderma appalatnum Fourth pic looks like Smokey Bracket.

Yep. District council tree officer is monitoring its health. I shall get some pictures of it in May and again in August. My colleagues and i have offered our services to get it felled but havent heard anything yet. It dropped a branch some time over night which had landed on the container. And it has a split about 4 foot up from the base.

I took some pictures of a very unwell Horse Chestnut. It only shows the fruting bodies which i beleive are Ganoderma australe. It also has Bleeding Canker on its back edge. There are some "softer" brackets which are obviously annual brackets. I'm not sure what the softer, degraded brackets are. Luckily the tree is not on our land but it well within falling distance of the Blandford section of North dorset trailway, Cricket Pavilion, Shipping container, powertool store and a new build Care home.

I've stayed there for a whole week as my step cousins run a gun shop. They always have a stall at the game fair and they have more than enough room for their 9 ton truck, sprinter van, tents and other bits and bobs round the back of the stall. When i did it last we had a race around the aisles at bout 9 It was still light so we couldnt resist having a rag around. Got one complaint about noise but then the security guys and cla workers joined in. Was funny seeing them in the morning. Looked like death warmed up.

Had a bit of a surprise last year. If we knew we had to do some off roading we would have gone in the discovery. Wasnt very nice hearing the exhaust and diff catching on the turf but got to the car park with no problems. Left a nice exhaust mark on the long grass when we left.

They have cracked the traffic at Blenheim. Providing no-one goes up the rear of another vehicle at 60. Lots of damage but all survived. If the weather is good we'll be going in the BMW if the weather is naff in the 110.

Anyone going to the CLA Game fair this year? Its at Blenheim Palace, Oxford. 22-24 July. Already got tickets for this year. Hopefully the weather will be ok. Hoping to go with my old man and an old work colleague in the BMW. Been going in the Discovery for the past couple of years.

My old man and i are on call. We have a 110 that would happily and easily drag a cut tree to the side of the road. Only had one call out so far for a canker ridden ash crown on a fairly minor road. Just waiting for the big one when i can get hold of one my colleagues to come and give us a hand.

I got a little wind meter on the top of my garage. It just read a 62 mph gust. I live in the middle of a housing estate but there is a clear run for the wind to howl up the close to the garage. Might do a couple of hours work tomorrow to check everything is ok tree wise.

When i was at Kingston Maurward in the second year of my ND. We stayed in the area around Pitlochry as part of our week long study tour. Very nice area. Would advise either get plane or train as we went up in an LDV Convoy 17 seater minibus (backseats removed for bags). Was good fun for the first 2 hours then it dragged a bit when we got onto the M5. But other than that it was great fun.

Somewhere there's a poor bloke called Colin Wanker who has to live with the fact his name is an anagram of Neil Warnock.

We do plan to do a deadwood and light weight reduction sometime in the near future. We have one limb to reduce/remove as the bark on the top has completely died and fallen off. The tree is in good health so wont be felled unless something seriously goes wrong. Looking at the base of it there are very few butress roots showing which leads me to suspect that the ground has been raised up around it. The attenuation pond is about 25 years old and is in need of being re-dredged. So i think the spoil was spread around as we have some smaller oaks which are about 25-30 years old.

Two trees down where i am based. A small ivy clad hawthorn and a sizable Ash coppice stool that "exploded" at the base when it fell over. 5 stems hung up and under massive tension (all bowing) and 3 on the footpath. Weren't expecting much down so we had to treck back to our yard to pick up the chipper. One of the guys stupidly walked in front of the chip chute as i fired it up. He got rather damp from the 2 gallons of water that flew out. Still was a good day. Dug out a ditch that needed doing as it had flooded again overnight and was slowly washing the track bed away. No pictures sadly as camera battery was flat.

Checked the Gillingham sites today and noticed that one of the big Oaks we have on our sites has what appears to be fibre buckling. Never noticed it before which is unusual for me. Here is a pic of the buckling close up and an image of the tree taken October last year.

Whilst going site checks i did a quick scan of the trees. I noticed on one of roadside Alders it had some small brackets growing out of an old wound. The tree has large epicormic growths that are only about 6 years old. It hasnt been showing many signs of distress (apart from epicormic growth). The first 7 pictures are of the first tree. The second tree is next to a well used pedestrian bridge. It is showing signs of dieback in the crown. I think the fungi is of the Phellinus family but not sure which one. Any help would be greatly appreciated. P.S. Sorry for the amount of pics for people to look through.

After pics. Last few bits to drag n burn.

It is at the top of Gains Cross hill just off the main road. Whilst speaking to members of the public who used to travel on the line there was a tunnel that gave the farmer (Pitt-Rivers) access to fields on the other side of the old railway line. This has since been infilled with asbestos contaminated waste ( so will cost mega money to have dug out and removed). We had Stourpaine (river bridge) rebuilt by our in house county contractors. The bridge number for the bridge that crosses the stour is number 185. We have just secured the bit of land at the A350/357 junction. All that remains is to clear out the trees on all sides of the bridge to make a thorough assessment. Although the A350 goes over it we dont know what sort of state it is in underneath. We do have some big (150+ ton) contaminated soil heaps to get shifted and some Japanese Knotweed on the section too but if we can clear it so the diggers can get in and dig it out then we can use the cleaner soil to fill in the hole. Here is a link showing the route from Shillingstone rec to Stourpaine. RR Photo Gallery Group 49