[quote=Ekka;1118]Couple things.
The tree has been planted out from the footpath and narrowing the street ... see red lines in attached.
The tree is severly unbalanced, may either lose a limb shown by red line or fall if roots building side not strong enough.
Yellow line asks for inspection of limb looking for fibre buckling and growth triations etc ... signs of weight stress.
Purple circle shows cool car.
Artists inpression of possible canopy reshape if wieghting and limb failure may occur.
You're right the presence of the tree has narrowed the entrance to the street, my estimate of the age for this tree is 60-75yrs base on others of this species that I've had a great deal to do with. So the tree would have been there when the side street was initially sealed, and its retention again thanks to the foresight of the council has been secured at the cost to street width.
The structure heading to the left is the majority of the mass of the tree, and yes as I indicated with very, very little disturbance to the paved footpath on the right it suggests major root pruning when the commercial building went up around 35yrs ago, and doubtless since then to keep the footpath level.
Sure given enough time this imbalance will in all likelyhood produce more serious problems than the minor building conflicts you can see in my inintial photos. But in terms of major limb failure this species exhibits extraordinary levels of internal structural strength through its limbs.
I've worked on one tree with a scafold limb growing horizontally from the stem 3m up, 32m long, 1.1m diameter(asymetrical) honestly I've never seen trees like these, sure figs and oaks develop equally large limbs but figs have prop roots and oak limbs bend down to touch the ground long before these raintrees do...seeing is believing. In the shots below the limb comes off the main trunk (6m back) divides into three and spreads out over a tuckshop paved walkway and another class room block.
DSCF6119.JPG DSCF6114.JPG DSCF6117.JPG
In the street tree there are no unusal indicator in the bark,(I'll try to get a shot of that structure today) some fibre buckling will occur with the sort of masses envolved, but again Ekka is probably correct over time and given the extreme weather events we can get the tree will fail due undoubtably to the removal of massive volumes of root plate and the damage to the branch architecture from lopping.
The car is cool, but you know the only significant piece of deadwood is right over that car, and if it were to fall you can bet the owner would go the council for mega $$'s resulting in god knows what for the tree...
If any of you are ever heading up through North Queensland let me know and I'll take you around to some of these babies you'll wet yourself
SF