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Willowboy

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Posts posted by Willowboy

  1. Hi, I'm looking for further information on the effect on root growth after severely topping an early mature broadleaf, say, for example, a sycamore.  Obviously, root extension will be curtailed as carbohydrate resources are diverted to the crown, but how much retrenchment of the root system will occur, and will it regrow in proportion to the crown. There must be studies out there, but I have not come across them yet.

  2. Last year was a good year for broadleaf aphids in northeast Scotland, and as a LA TO I've had alot of negative feedback from members of the public regarding secretions messing up cars, patios, shrubs etc. One chap in particular is adopting a barrack room lawyer approach, shouting loudly about actionable nuisance, and demanding that we remove a couple of 85 year old limes from the pavement outside his house, part of an avenue of limes in a CA.

    Obviously, that aint gonna happen, it's not in policy, any more than removing trees because of bird poop or leaf litter, but I'd be interested to hear if anyone knows if damage from honeydew has ever been tested in court.

  3. Interesting...thanks for sharing.  The main takehome point for me is that between 15 - 58% of trees tested by PCR had decay fungi present (a smaller number than I would have thought), but if it is latent in the sapwood or effectively compartmentalised it doesn't pose an immediate issue for the tree.  Fruiting bodies are an indication that a particular decay fungi is present and active in the tree and probably has been for a while, and obvs should be seriously appraised, but their presence/absence is only one strand of VTA, which looks at the tree, and its' responses to a number of different factors, as a whole.

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  4. 11 hours ago, tree-fancier123 said:

    Gano and all the other fungal nasties. The tree equivalents of small pox and bubonic plague.

    Nonsense! You can't anthropomorphise the relationship between trees and fungi, and can't reduce it to 'good' guys and 'bad' guys...

    Trees and decay fungi have evolved together over millennia, and while it is disappointing to lose individual valuable trees to the likes of Ganoderma (and as a TO I've lost a few on my patch) there's no point getting hysterical about it.

    Incidentally, the '87 hurricane was a lightbulb moment for arboriculture, when it was realised that hollowed trees were more resilient to windblow than non-decayed stems.   

  5. Anybody got any ideas on how long it will take for a functional mycorrhizal community to develop naturally on a new tree planting site on what was formerly a landfill, rough grazing and amenity grassland.   Are we talking years or decades, and what can be practically be  done to speed up the process?

  6. Can anyone help with this alder id?  I'm familiar with black, grey, red, green, italian and sitka but this doesn't fit the bill with any of them.  Closest to Italian in jizz but leaves are massive (25x11cm), almost hairless and uneven at base rather than cordate. Thanks

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  7. Hi all,

    Some basic dumbarse questions I hope you can help me with:

    Am I right in believing that the only recourse a LA can have to stop treework being carried in a Conservation Area is to put on a TPO before the end of 6 weeks after receiving a notice of intent describing the work?  

    Or do they have other powers to stop work?

    Also, if a LA requests clarification or further info, does the 6 weeks period start again?

  8. Went to Duncan Slater's Fork workshop in Edinburgh a couple of days ago. His research shows that 93% of unions with included bark are associated with strain being removed from the branch by mechanical bracing further up the branch, such as by crossing or rubbing branches, at some point in time.

    So trees with a naturally dense and tangled crown, such as whitebeams or hornbeams for example, or fastigiate cultivars of many sp. have a genetic predisposition to 'bad crotches'.

  9. Do the beetles wait for height or is it maturity?

     

    Dredging my memory of lectures 20 years ago, I think the beetles find trees of a suitable height, where they feed in the leaf axils on twigs in the crown, infecting the phloem with the fungal spores picked up from the dead wood in which they hatched.

    The infection then progresses up the branches and eventually into the trunk aided by the trees own nutrient transportation system, leaving dead branches and a 'stag-headed' look to the crown.

    Debarking any felled infected timber will deprive beetles of egg-laying sites.

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