200mm boxed grade change| Araucaria columnaris

Eric Frei

Araucaria columnaris or Cook Pine had a small boxed garden 200mm high put around it with soil and some little plants.

The predominant winds are from the SE so it would put the tree right onto the house and perhaps the neighbour shed too if it came down.

Lets see how the tree faired inside.

Here's pictures of the tree so you get an idea of size, do note this tree was under no protection orders at all. The red circle in the second picture shows the little boxed garden.





You can see the extent of the decay and as I grind deeper it gets worse. For pictures I stopped pretty flush with ground and wet the stump to bring the colour out but I went about 1 foot deep on this, deeper it was just mush and easy to grind, roots heavily decayed on the east side. No doubt this tree would have failed later in it's life. This is a great example of how small changes can have a great influence on trees. Mulching up to the tree trunk and putting fill around trees even like this little box garden can be detrimental.

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redmower

Eric

Nice little illustrated story there. Any suggestions as to what the principal decay pathogen was?

ps The Cook Islands are some 2500 km to the east of New Caledonia (where your Cook Pine is endemic). I think the 'Is' may have snuck onto your list of tree common names without your knowledge.

spers

nice job man real nice destumper too!

Eric Frei

Oops, I better fix that, I have been letting that roll off the tongue for ages.

I do not know what caused the rot, was no fruiting bodies and the bark even seemed fine. This had no VTA symptoms. Sort of inline with this other thread where the question is asked, is VTA enough? I wonder often should I just drill the tree to make sure?

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