Laura 12345

Some interesting opinions mentioned here, thanks all for replying. I believe the site was an old stately home, as it has some beautiful ancient/veteran oaks and an old ice house, so I wondered if some of the ditches were old boundary features, which predated some of these trees (like the horse chesntuts on the images) - however, clearance work certainly may have causing the wounding shown. Thanks all!

No, you're correct - some of the limbs were leaning quite signficiantly away from the others.

Hi all, I was at a site a few weeks ago, and took these photos of a mature horse chesntut next to an old ditch. It was single stemmed to about 1.5m, then subdivided into three. Each stem/main branch has vertical wounds with heartrot and inrolled tissue from about 1.5m to 6-7m. There was also a similar wound to the main stem from ~0.1-1.3m. They all face east, which is the direction of the ditch. Some of these wounds have fully occluded. There were no such features to the south/west/north. I had considered old, cumulative frost cracking, but given that the wounds all face east this seems less likely. Could it have something to do with the ditch? It was dry at the time of the survey but presumably wet during wetter periods.The tree wasn't leaning. Would love to hear other people's thoughts and guesses. 20240326_133931622_iOS.heic 20240326_133936231_iOS.heic 20240326_134114593_iOS.heic

Thank you! I remember thanking you on a previous post when something like this happened too 😁

Please forgive my ignorance, but what does SEP stand for?

Hi all, Spotted a very interesting old sycamore the other day (990mm dbh). I've never seen anything like this before on the stem + major limbs - some of it looked like extensive burrs of epicormic, but on the limbs it looked more akin to cankering in places. There were no fruiting bodies anywhere. Has anyone seen anything like this before? Any ideas as to what it could be? Thanks!

All across England!

Hi all, A quick question here concerning new residential developments on sites with TPO trees. Obviously the ideal situation is to incorperate TPO trees into areas of new public open space within a layout but, in a situation where this may not be possible for all TPO trees at a site, is there any legislation/standing advice against having TPO trees in private gardens? Appreciate the likely pushback from TOs with the expectation for the potential increase in works applications and limited control on what people do in their private gardens, but is there any formal legislation on this? It would be useful to present to clients/architects. Thank you.

Thank you for the answer relevant to the original question! Much appreciated. I had been using the tables/charts from the Woodland Trust's Ancient Tree Guide (2008) and from D.Lonsdale's 2013 guide 'Ancient and other veteran trees', but they both differed ever so slightly in the girth at which an oak would be classed as a 'young ancient' rather than notable! Am going to do some more reading around and have a course in Epping Forest with the ATF in December about veteran/ancient trees, so hopefully will be able to learn a lot more soon.

Apologies for the phrasing, I meant cavities and was being lazy in typing it as I did!

Thanks for the response Sutton. Normally, we would make recommendations for tree work (including the types of suggestion you made), but this tree was located offsite. As a minimum, we will use the veteran tree buffer zone in the Government's standing advice and have no development/level change/ soil stripping in this area!

Good afternoon all, On a relatively recent tree survey, I came across this stunning oak tree. It had a stem diameter of roughly 1700mm (it exceeded my diameter tape of 1600mm) and extensive heart rot, but other than that there were relatively few ancient/veteran characteristic features. There was relatively little deadwood, no fungal fruiting bodies, no basal/limb cavities etc... A tree of this size is obviously incredibly important, exceeds the size of a 'normal' mature oak tree and I am sure it is on the transitory cusp of mature-ancient; however, I am curious as to what you all would categorise the tree as, as, under some source material, it wouldn't be large enough to be ancient, nor have enough features to be veteran? For example, the Ancient Tree Forum states that most ancient oak trees have a girth over 6m. Would be really interested to hear your thoughts

Thank you, I have emailed and hopefully they'll be running another training course in the future?!? Fingers crossed anyway. I'll have a look at the Mitchell's Building Series books now, sounds like they'll be essential reading!

Hi all, One part of my job that I feel I'm out of my depth and lacking understanding in is the technical/engineering and construction side, like understanding architectural drawings (particularly level changes), foundation and retaining wall design etc, which forms a critical part of the arb consulting job! I know LABC did a training course on Ground Works and Foundations earlier on in the year that I missed, but has anyone else got any recommendations for good training? I have done the TreeLife Level 4 and, though it is incredibly useful for the tree-side of things, it doesn't help fill these gaps in my knowledge. As always, any advice would be greatly appreciated.

Ahh interesting, thank you!