One for the tree experts

[John Rumm]

Probably not. It not the main farm access road. The owner had gated it off and resurfaced it to make it more part of the garden now - block paving it was part of that process.

[The Natural Philosopher]

Its almost complete crap actually.

Its almost impossible to split or saw when dry, so cordon up when still green. It burns badly, even when fully dry. There isn't much wood in it to start with, and it tends to smoulder. On its own, in an open fire, its hard to keep it alight - needs to be mixed with better logs.

Of all the woods we have attempted to burn, it is the worst. even poplar is better.

Its ok-ish in a stove with better draught control.

[The Natural Philosopher]

Not too bad when fully dry.

[The Natural Philosopher]

>>>>> >>>>> I would tend to hold off with any drastic hacking yet - esp as you say >>> the

Yes indeed. Neices surgery wqas when bough suffereing frim sever subsidence due to willow tree 20 meters from front. Now lopped and teh building underpinned. Those roots go for MILES to find water. Well tens of meters anyway.

Weeper in the garden took ten years to get its roots down. Now growing at 2 ft a year. Found the pond I think :-)

Older willow fallen in half AGAIN this winter. Old man willow always has a rotten heart, but fear not. Willow will regenerate from (as my landlord a decade ago attested ) 'some sticks I done cut off and drove into the ground to make a chicken coop, in the war'

The resultant willows were in the 90's 15 meters tall, and too close to the fen drain, but hey, willows are trees, and the fens don't have many.

I think they are still there.

So if you are worried, cut some branches off, stick em in the ground, and if its soggy, they will grow into new trees.

Dead willow branches fall off. Even not dead ones fall off. Willows live by collapsing into stumps that start up again, and again, and again..

All they need is water and light, but even a perfectly sound looking tree is liable to shed MASSIVE branches in a storm. They overgrow their strength, always. Never be shy about pruning one back. I've never got rid of one except by pulling up the stump. And the suckers sprouted till a few rears of mowing put pay to them.

Disease is what gets most of them. Birches and birch bracket fungus is typical here. Banks of completely dead birches. That fall over.

Had similar with fruit trees as well. One year. Phut. No leaves., Die.

Or elms. Got lots of baby elms. They never make it past 15 feet. Beetle gets em.

[spamlet]

>>>>>>> >>>>>>> I would tend to hold off with any drastic hacking yet - esp as you say >>>> the

Elms are mostly clones and all joined together under the ground, making the concept of 'species' a rather difficult one in their case. Elms have not died out, there are just not that many actual standards at the moment as once there is enough bark, then returns the beetle. They just keep suckering along though.

As for willows I don't think there is anything as bad as birch bracket: birches are just short-lived trees and there is not enough thickness to them to hold them up when the heart wood has gone.

Willows are much more resilient, and I was absolutely furious when our parks dept cut down a whole row that were leaning over an ornamental lake - where it would not have mattered if they did fall over. They were a good 6 or 7 feet across at the bottom and all the stumps showed perfectly sound wood right to the centre. Their crime? A couple of them (very unusually for willows) sprouted some delicious Chicken of the Woods, brackets one year. I managed to grab a bagful, and next time I came by, the whole lot had been felled, though they clearly would have been good for another couple of hundred years! The perfect white stumps stood as monuments to the idiocy of chainsaw happy parks departments just looking for excuses to trash trees, Or perhaps they were doing a side line in cricket bats...

Incidentally, around the same lake were some still surviving elm standards. But I expect they have managed to find an excuse for trashing even them now! (I daren't look these days...)

S

[Huge]

[Tim Lamb]

In message , spamlet writes

snip

Something to do with *duty of care* deeply felt by landowners though their insurance premiums.

We are required to guess which branch off which tree is going to inconvenience legitimate land users. I forget the detail but along the lines of *somebody has to be responsible for every event*.

regards

[Tim Lamb]

:-)

Tricky thing that! DEFRA or its predecessor once prosecuted a farmer for created a Rose garden on designated agricultural land.

regards

>

[spamlet]

[John Rumm]

I suspect this was the other way round in this case - at some point in the past someone must have created an access way through the private house's land for the farm, but then a few years back they got PP to build a proper access road that goes through a field a bit further down the road.

[robgraham]

for tips on any local experts you can trust

Many thanks for the treatise,S, extremely helpful. Not on the same scale but the winter 'killed' off a cotoneaster bush. I cut it back to the main stem wondering if such a regrowth might happen, and yesterday I noticed that this stem has small growths occurring all over it - it would seem from where I stand this is a good example of epicormic growth !

Rob

[andrew]

It's a good example of coppicing, epicormic shoots normally refers to growth from the stem whilst there's a crown still there. Both these and pollarding depend on the remaining wood having adventitious buds ready to burst once the inhibiting plant hormones cease being produced from above.

In John's willow case I think the problem is more general and the whole tree will die from the root up.

AJH

[Graeme]

In message , robgraham writes

No help to John, but I have found the whole thread utterly fascinating.

[spamlet]

Many thanks for the treatise,S, extremely helpful. Not on the same scale but the winter 'killed' off a cotoneaster bush. I cut it back to the main stem wondering if such a regrowth might happen, and yesterday I noticed that this stem has small growths occurring all over it - it would seem from where I stand this is a good example of epicormic growth !

Rob

Nice to be appreciated thanks Rob,

Oddly enough, I was just inspecting the row of pots along our patio, and it looks like a cotoneaster has succumbed to the frost but a pomegranate next to it of about the same size is leafing up. Somehow I would have expected it to be the other way round! If you are really interested in adventurous ideas, I am waiting to see if greengage buds I grafted on to our apple tree last year might just sprout - a very long shot after the awful winter, but you never know...

Cheers, S

[The Natural Philosopher]

robgraham wrote: Not on the same

I had a 5ft tall bush which was cut back by the builders before i could remove it properly.

It got replanted..what was left anyway.

Now 7 years on., its neartly as big as it was.

the one I bought as a small pot at the same time, is bigger :-(

Sometimes its a waste of time, literally!

[The Natural Philosopher]

spamlet wrote: I am waiting to see if greengage buds I grafted on to our apple tree

Cheeky. My greengages are covered in Fungi, I keep cutting diseased dead branches,band the rest keep on sprouting!

One 'dead stump', 15 years on is now a productive tree.

[Dave Liquorice]

Bit keen in assuming it was "killed"? Spring is very late this year and I wouldn't assume a shrub or tree is dead unless it showed no sign of life all summer and certainly not this early in the year of it's "death".

The winter was bad up here and the prolonged deep snow cover forced the rabbits into eating the bark from the trees. Many have been ring barked but they ain't dead yet, some have managed to break bud above the ring barking but haven't liked the recent hot days and the leaves have wilted. Below the ring barking the dormant buds are no longer dormat... A month or so back we were thinking we'd probably lost 20% of the trees in the paddock due to the rabbit damage, now we think most will actually survive, all be it in a coppiced form.

[spamlet]

Now you are making me jealous, I just love those things, but have never really had anywhere to put them: hence the idea of trying to see if I could combine a branch or two on the apple.

S

[spamlet]

--

You're not really my brother in law under an alias are you? I've just been having that same discussion with him. He's been making a little orchard of different varieties, and just as they were getting the right size, the snow came down and the rabbits apparently ringbarked half of them. I suggested he might try to redo the grafts, by cutting out the stripped section and V grafting before the sap got really going, but in fact they all seem to be flowering and leafing up after all, so with any luck the bunnies only took the surface bark - unlike their nasty squirrel friends further up the bigger conker trees!

S

[andrew]

They just need a thin strip of the cambium layer to survive, I've not tried grafting a layer of bark over a srtipped bit.

Be aware that the sap will still be carried up the phloem so normal budding and leaf growth will appear and the stem above the ring barked area will put on growth but the area below will die off over the summer if there is no connection.

I've seen some young pine ring barked by attack dog training and these took a number of years before they failed, the stem below the attack became noticeably thinner than that above.

AJH