Cassian Humphreys leaving stubs in Arbor Age Articles?

Ekka · 6th December 2007, 09:24 PM

The Australian Arbor Age October - November 2007 edition page 61.

I have scanned the page and blown up the pic and added a red line as to where the correct cut should be made.

If you look at the pic carefully you'll notice that all his lines with the green arrow heads pointing to the BBR are out by the same amount as his white cut line. Looks like the whole overlay of his "paint shop" is out to the left by the same amount and if it were all moved right by the few inches then it would line up, except that his cut needs to be a tad more acute (closer to trunk at bottom).

That union he has photographed is called a collarless union. The way you cut them is mirror the BBR angle to the trunk on the other side of the BBR. I put a red line in the blown up pic to show.

Not a good typo, could mean stub cuts and no understanding of the 3 cuts I speak of often.

Pruning cuts - collar, collarless and co-dominant

JohN Dee · 10th December 2007, 11:22 AM

Indeed a big typo... By a very infuential magazine :\.

But hay, who prunes camphors? They're classified as weeds down here

Knock em' out gooooonskeeees!

treeseer · 17th December 2007, 09:56 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Ekka

The way you cut them is mirror the BBR angle to the trunk on the other side of the BBR.

This may be a general rule of eyeball, but not always true. The key criterion is: Avoid wounding stem tissue. Humphries hints at this by cutting outside the trees' compression and tension wood.

O and the perfect cut is between yours and Humphries'. He leaves too much branch tissue, and you take too much stem tissue.

Eric, if you know so much, why don't YOU write an article?

a_lopa · 17th December 2007, 12:41 PM

Maybe i could write an article

Your right about the cutting Guy..

treeseer · 17th December 2007, 01:44 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by a_lopa

Maybe i could write an article

Well heck I mean you are an astronaut already, so author is not so much of a leap!

O and I love camphor trees; they grow well in Florida usa and anything but weeds in that climate. Fun to prune--easy targets and so sweet smelling.

Ekka · 17th December 2007, 02:40 PM

They're a weed in NSW, free for all removals!

But they do smell nice.

Lopa's writing the article on how to catch snapper in Port Phillip Bay.

Sean Freeman · 17th December 2007, 03:08 PM

Its funny how moderate differences in climate produce very different reactions from trees....Camphors don't grow well up here at all, in fact there is only one that I know of in one of the Bot Gdns, yet down with Eric they are nuts amongst the riparian strips.
On my last visit to GC I was absolutely amazed to see the volume of Erythrina crista-galli growing again on the edge of the watercourses. We just don't get it up here only Erythrina vespertilio and a very pretty tree it is too.
I'll try to get some shots of the masses of the Indian Coral next Jan when i'm down there again, quite amazing how much of it there is...not a bad little tree either btw...shame noone can see a use for the timber, I wonder what its like for fire wood or turning?

On the Cassian photo error, Im pretty confident that it is as you originally suggested Eric a photo editing error, I know very well that Cassian is passionate about his work and about keeping up the highest standards, he is also a real stickler for adhering to Shigo's recommendations for locations of cuts.

Ekka · 17th December 2007, 03:18 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Sean Freeman

he is also a real stickler for adhering to Shigo's recommendations for locations of cuts.

He's not like GuyM then?

treeseer · 17th December 2007, 10:28 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Sean Freeman

adhering to Shigo's recommendations for locations of cuts.

Sean as you know Shigo gave themes, not rules or specific recommendations. "Every branch will be different." AS, p. 425, ANTB.

Eric, if you are so sure that your red line is korrect, we'll no doubt be seeing your Letter to the Editor. Get it in soon--they are putting the Jan-Feb issue together right now.

Stats show that letters are the most-read part of the mag, so your keen analysis and your flush cut should get a full review. Here's a letter to our Tree Care Industry magazine, which elicited an admission from the editor and the author, and two subsequent letters that agreed with the other points.

Get the ball rolling, mate! Just be careful that it does not roll over you.

Dear Editor,

When I read in H. Dennis P. Ryan III, Ph.D.?s article on cabling (July 2007 issue) http://www.tcia.org/PDFs/TCI_Mag_July_07.pdf that ?you shall use a lag instead of an eyebolt in a decayed limb?, I reached for my ANSI Support Standards. I?m no expert on the subject, but common sense told me the opposite was true. Sure enough, ANSI said ?Lag-threaded hardware shall only be installed in sound wood.? This is confirmed in the BMP?s, which the article listed as a reference. Dennis seems to have it backwards, or there was a typo or an editing error. TCIA typically does an excellent job upholding ANSI, so it was surprising to see this slip.

The caption to the first picture, of an ash tree with included bark, states that ??without support it will fail.? It?s important to look at tree risk objectively, without exaggerating our knowledge of what will happen. It was also disappointing to read the author?s opinions that synthetic ropes are ?ugly?, while ?a steel cabling system ?is not visible to most people?.

Steel cables are easy to see, and ugly is in the eye of the beholder. It?s not clear whether the author?s aesthetic bias indicates a deeper prejudice against dynamic cabling. In any case, what place does this degree of subjectivity have in a technical article? I hope that when you print an article on dynamic systems it will have fewer errors, and more objectivity.

Sean Freeman · 17th December 2007, 11:09 PM

Quote:

Sean as you know Shigo gave themes, not rules or specific recommendations. "Every branch will be different." AS, p. 425, ANTB

Yes, well put Guy, and a timely reminder of why Shigo's work will outlive many of his contemporaries.....and as you know I tend to paraphrase too easily and somewhat clumsily!!

Ekka · 18th December 2007, 06:09 AM

Guy, you may want to read this thread.

Pruning cuts - collar, collarless and co-dominant

After years of pruning cuts and watching the results I can confidently say that I have seen more stubs with poor results than flush cuts.

I can also say that on the trees I have cut here there's been near perfect results with even callus wood growth and little die back of stubs or aggressive callus wood on "stem tissue" from flush cuts.

The 2 most difficult cuts for arbos to do is the collarless union and codominant. The difficulty lies in knowing where to cut and recognizing the difference of the unions.

treestyle · 18th December 2007, 11:18 PM

on the 5th and 6th i attended Cassian's course on "tree culture". It touched on many elements of caring for trees. for me it was very good, it was inspiring.

so at the end of of the course i go up and have a yarn with Cassian, i tell him about a great local tree forum. he was pleased to hear about it and promptly got his notebook and wrote the address down.....www.treeworld.info. He was keen to check it out.

Any way i get home and log on. what do i see? this thread. ahhhh, that's real professional! i thought we were trying to encourage all sorts of imput into this site. seems its a one man show though.

perhaps the post could've read "arb age printing error"?.

Cassian is a good bloke, i think he could teach ALL of atleast one thing new about trees.

oh well, that's all i got to say.

Ekka · 18th December 2007, 11:42 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by treestyle

Any way i get home and log on. what do i see? this thread. ahhhh, that's real professional! i thought we were trying to encourage all sorts of imput into this site. seems its a one man show though.

No, what you see is a question asked.

What's not professional is some-one not clarifying the problem, we are still making assumptions that it is a printing error, what assumptions are you making?

treeseer · 19th December 2007, 12:18 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Ekka

what assumptions are you making?

Well Eric, one assumption I'm inclined to make is that the question was posed more in the spirit of lobbing hand grenades as an agent provocateur than building consensus.

This can be a really good thread if it focuses on tree biology. I hope any visitor here will look at the excellent content Eric has posted here and not be provoked by one thread title. Maybe Cassian will be kind enough to join in here. I think he made an excellent point about analyzing reaction wood before removing it.

Eric your point about not leaving any branch tissue may be borne out in the attached pic. This branch was torn off in a 1996 hurricane. I pruned it after an ice storm in 2002. Now there is excellent closure except where I left that little stubbish tip you see in the middle.

Shigo was right when he pointed out we need diferent cutting tools to reach into areas like that. I'm wondering how to fit a hammer and chisel into my scabbard.

Ekka · 19th December 2007, 12:41 AM

20,000 copies of that magazine went out.

That means some 40,000+ people are looking at stub cuts.

Anyone else notice? Anyone else say anything? Did Cassian submit it that way? Did Arborage print it wrong? Did not anyone of those parties notice it? Perhaps it's right!

Guy, maybe he does leave stubs, you do!

treeseer · 19th December 2007, 12:51 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Ekka

20,000 copies of that magazine went out.

Wow, that many? That's the circulation of Arborist News. TCI's is 28k.

Quote:

Anyone else notice? Anyone else say anything? Did Cassian submit it that way? Did Arborage print it wrong? Did not anyone of those parties notice it? :

I felt the same way when I saw the recommendation to install lag bolts in rotten wood. But that was a blackandwhite call, unlike pruning cut locations. The only way to find out the answers may be to get your letter in, if you have the scientific rationale to back up your opinions. You may have procrastinated long enough to miss the next issue, lucky you.

How would you react if you saw this thread title in an unfamiliar place: "Eric Frei flushcutting in Brisbane?"?

Another more civil way than a flaming thread here might be to contact the author directly.

Ekka · 19th December 2007, 01:02 AM

What am I now, the ArborCop?

He can do what he likes, he knows where we are, in fact all parties do.

treeseer · 19th December 2007, 01:42 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Ekka

What am I now, the ArborCop?

.

We are all ArborCops; why else are we here? If you lack the fortitude to opine outside of this cocoon, your input is self-limited. Kinda like your friend--and role model?-- BB, freewheeling in his own forum but silent outside of it.

Gotcha, dude.

Now what about the tree biology?

Ekka · 19th December 2007, 06:43 AM

Plenty goes on outside of this forum, and AA has printed it's share.

You know this forum has more members than all Australian arb orgs, imagine that, more than ISAAC and QAA combined ... if anything the cocoons may well be living there.

Did you also know that video downloads exceed 100gig a month, hundreds of referals from my other 2 sites to here a month not counting referals from other areas.

If this is a cocoon then you truly do need to understand how internet works.

Do you know what linkbacks and pings are? Do you know what those little icons on each post are for and how people use them? In fact embracing the combination of video, social networking sites, forums and giving instant publication is the way of the future and what people desire. The intimidation set out herein is what people avoid, what people dislike and what people notice every day in various forms.

In the article he speaks of cuts being out by millimetres, so now we have Ekka's red line, Cassian's white line, your invisible in between line. Pretty darned ridiculous for a bunch of experts. People see but are shunned to say, they read articles like that and think ... Yeah yeah, look where he cut but I better not say anything coz he's the expert. Just like when I tell you you're leaving stubs.

Do you remember that stub I painted naughts and crosses on Guy, kind of fitting.

Well, I've loaded up the pic and a doc with the link to that thread, it's been 2.5 years since you did that, any after pics?

treeseer · 19th December 2007, 06:56 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Ekka

Do you remember that stub I painted naughts and crosses on Guy, kind of fitting.

I wish I did remember; refresh me please.

Ekka · 19th December 2007, 07:30 AM

All your pics seem to be gone from that thread over there, lucky I kept a few, also look at the poll results, pretty sad really.

So yeah, I care where I cut and try to nail it spot on every time. And 10 years ago I shyed from where I cut today leaving little slight stubs etc and then I'd notice that they'd just decay back a little and the callus wood would be growing further back. So why leave decaying wood there and add distance to for the callus wood to grow? Not sensible.

On the way back from the tip yesterday I pulled over and took a pic of this large cut on an angophera costata.

What do you think beside the cut being so large, remember to take into account growth since the cut?

Sean Freeman · 19th December 2007, 01:08 PM

Can we get a little clarity in this thread please?
I happen to know Cassian personally and whilst he and his training program need no defending by me....it stands up perfectly well on its own merits...let me simply state this anyone who has ever met Cassian will very quickly realise two things
....he doesn't consider himself an expert, he sees himself as continually learning and developing on the ideas and concepts of people like Shigo and Mattheck
....he is absolutely passionate about the arboriculturally correct approach to tree care especially when it envolves very troublesome issues like utility-tree conflicts

I doubt very much if Cassian would have the time or the inclination to join the forum and contribute...he's spent the last three years (at least) developing his training package to make a very significant contribution to the improvement in how trees are managed in proximity to electrical services.

Just so all reading are clear IMO the position of the white line is out too far and yes looks like a typo/editing error since the two green arrows also seem out, the red line cuts into the top of the BBR not a great idea! Which of the two would I prefer if there were such a contrived decision to make?
Don't cut into the BBR.
We've been here before Eric in the codominant stem thread...if the final cut is 10/20mm out leaving 10/20mm of branch tissue thats preferrable to me than exposing stem tissues...as Guy has pointed out Shigo did not want us to be applying some inflexible one size fits every tree, rather understanding the principals of tree biology and applying them to each tree we work on. As Ive tried to make clear Cassian has spent years taking Shigo's work and fitting into a training package for supervisors of utility tree crews, trust me its a typo!

treeseer · 19th December 2007, 01:37 PM

'I doubt very much if Cassian would have the time or the inclination to join the forum and contribute...he's spent the last three years (at least) developing his training package"

Sean, that will be his loss. If he is as you say still learning it seems he may take a moment to see and hear and contribute, even if the reward is different than that from training utility workers, but that is his choice.

O, and, if you are so sure that line was a typo, have you written the editor??????

O and eric yes I DO have after pics of that "stub" aka long collar. just took em last week and could not find that old thread at AN. Bad angle taken form the gorund but it seems there is not serious rot visible and no sprouting and good reason for expectations of closure. O and you can see that I did NOT make the cut where you made the red line. I moderated my saw in the course of discussion on that very rewarding thread..

Thanks--I will to to revive it at AN, but there is so little life there who knows if it will.

a_lopa · 19th December 2007, 02:38 PM

Personally i dont think its a typo,But i could be wrong...

Ekka · 19th December 2007, 04:02 PM

It's not good enough a pic Guy, we need to see the top of it too and see where callus is growing.

Even dead branches that dont get cut off end up with extended collars, the wood will continue to grow out and over for eternity.

What the deal is with that one cant be seen from the ground, and may involve removing some of the old bark to expose the new tissue beneath.

Here's an example where the stem was cut to square and the resultant callus wood has some distance to grow. Tis this shot we dont have Guy. And till I peeled of the dead old bark we couldn't see the new tissue.

10th December 2007, 11:22 AM	#2
JohN Dee Moderator - Sponsor Join Date: Feb 2007 Location: Sydney, Australia Posts: 940	Re: Cassian Humphreys leaving stubs in Arbor Age Articles? Indeed a big typo... By a very infuential magazine :\. But hay, who prunes camphors? They're classified as weeds down here Knock em' out gooooonskeeees! __________________ Don't tell me the sky is the limit, when there are footprints on the moon. Red : Green : Blue

17th December 2007, 12:41 PM	#4
a_lopa Sponsor Join Date: Jan 2007 Location: Australia Posts: 1,169	Re: Cassian Humphreys leaving stubs in Arbor Age Articles? Maybe i could write an article Your right about the cutting Guy.. __________________ Free Tree Industry Link Directory www.drouintreeservices.com.au

17th December 2007, 02:40 PM	#6
Ekka Admin - Dip Arb & Hort Join Date: Jan 2007 Location: Brisbane Posts: 9,094	Re: Cassian Humphreys leaving stubs in Arbor Age Articles? They're a weed in NSW, free for all removals! But they do smell nice. Lopa's writing the article on how to catch snapper in Port Phillip Bay. __________________ Arborist Training in Australia\| Your Free Helping Guide Free Tree and Green Industry Deep Link Directory ... Yes, I also SEO (Optimize) and build websites that fly high in Google Qualified Brisbane Tree Lopping \| Stump Grinding and Stump Removal Brisbane Brisbane - Gold Coast Tree Care, Consulting, Developer, Tree and Arborist Reports Consumers, insist on a Tree World member, they're visible and accessible. Look for this badge Members, click here for details on how you can acquire one for your website.

17th December 2007, 03:08 PM	#7
Sean Freeman PDF King & Arborist Extrodinaire Join Date: Feb 2007 Location: Townsville Nth Queensland & Gold Coast Sth Queensland Posts: 2,097	Re: Cassian Humphreys leaving stubs in Arbor Age Articles? Its funny how moderate differences in climate produce very different reactions from trees....Camphors don't grow well up here at all, in fact there is only one that I know of in one of the Bot Gdns, yet down with Eric they are nuts amongst the riparian strips. On my last visit to GC I was absolutely amazed to see the volume of Erythrina crista-galli growing again on the edge of the watercourses. We just don't get it up here only Erythrina vespertilio and a very pretty tree it is too. I'll try to get some shots of the masses of the Indian Coral next Jan when i'm down there again, quite amazing how much of it there is...not a bad little tree either btw...shame noone can see a use for the timber, I wonder what its like for fire wood or turning? On the Cassian photo error, Im pretty confident that it is as you originally suggested Eric a photo editing error, I know very well that Cassian is passionate about his work and about keeping up the highest standards, he is also a real stickler for adhering to Shigo's recommendations for locations of cuts. __________________ Sean Trees are poems that earth writes upon the sky, We fell them down and turn them into paper, That we may record our emptiness. - Kahlil Gibran

18th December 2007, 06:09 AM	#11
Ekka Admin - Dip Arb & Hort Join Date: Jan 2007 Location: Brisbane Posts: 9,094	Re: Cassian Humphreys leaving stubs in Arbor Age Articles? Guy, you may want to read this thread. Pruning cuts - collar, collarless and co-dominant After years of pruning cuts and watching the results I can confidently say that I have seen more stubs with poor results than flush cuts. I can also say that on the trees I have cut here there's been near perfect results with even callus wood growth and little die back of stubs or aggressive callus wood on "stem tissue" from flush cuts. The 2 most difficult cuts for arbos to do is the collarless union and codominant. The difficulty lies in knowing where to cut and recognizing the difference of the unions. __________________ Arborist Training in Australia\| Your Free Helping Guide Free Tree and Green Industry Deep Link Directory ... Yes, I also SEO (Optimize) and build websites that fly high in Google Qualified Brisbane Tree Lopping \| Stump Grinding and Stump Removal Brisbane Brisbane - Gold Coast Tree Care, Consulting, Developer, Tree and Arborist Reports Consumers, insist on a Tree World member, they're visible and accessible. Look for this badge Members, click here for details on how you can acquire one for your website.

18th December 2007, 11:18 PM	#12
treestyle Semi-mature vigorous tree Join Date: Jun 2007 Location: North Brisbane Posts: 124	Re: Cassian Humphreys leaving stubs in Arbor Age Articles? on the 5th and 6th i attended Cassian's course on "tree culture". It touched on many elements of caring for trees. for me it was very good, it was inspiring. so at the end of of the course i go up and have a yarn with Cassian, i tell him about a great local tree forum. he was pleased to hear about it and promptly got his notebook and wrote the address down.....www.treeworld.info. He was keen to check it out. Any way i get home and log on. what do i see? this thread. ahhhh, that's real professional! i thought we were trying to encourage all sorts of imput into this site. seems its a one man show though. perhaps the post could've read "arb age printing error"?. Cassian is a good bloke, i think he could teach ALL of atleast one thing new about trees. oh well, that's all i got to say.

19th December 2007, 12:41 AM	#15
Ekka Admin - Dip Arb & Hort Join Date: Jan 2007 Location: Brisbane Posts: 9,094	Re: Cassian Humphreys leaving stubs in Arbor Age Articles? 20,000 copies of that magazine went out. That means some 40,000+ people are looking at stub cuts. Anyone else notice? Anyone else say anything? Did Cassian submit it that way? Did Arborage print it wrong? Did not anyone of those parties notice it? Perhaps it's right! Guy, maybe he does leave stubs, you do! __________________ Arborist Training in Australia\| Your Free Helping Guide Free Tree and Green Industry Deep Link Directory ... Yes, I also SEO (Optimize) and build websites that fly high in Google Qualified Brisbane Tree Lopping \| Stump Grinding and Stump Removal Brisbane Brisbane - Gold Coast Tree Care, Consulting, Developer, Tree and Arborist Reports Consumers, insist on a Tree World member, they're visible and accessible. Look for this badge Members, click here for details on how you can acquire one for your website.

19th December 2007, 01:02 AM	#17
Ekka Admin - Dip Arb & Hort Join Date: Jan 2007 Location: Brisbane Posts: 9,094	Re: Cassian Humphreys leaving stubs in Arbor Age Articles? What am I now, the ArborCop? He can do what he likes, he knows where we are, in fact all parties do. __________________ Arborist Training in Australia\| Your Free Helping Guide Free Tree and Green Industry Deep Link Directory ... Yes, I also SEO (Optimize) and build websites that fly high in Google Qualified Brisbane Tree Lopping \| Stump Grinding and Stump Removal Brisbane Brisbane - Gold Coast Tree Care, Consulting, Developer, Tree and Arborist Reports Consumers, insist on a Tree World member, they're visible and accessible. Look for this badge Members, click here for details on how you can acquire one for your website.

19th December 2007, 01:08 PM	#22
Sean Freeman PDF King & Arborist Extrodinaire Join Date: Feb 2007 Location: Townsville Nth Queensland & Gold Coast Sth Queensland Posts: 2,097	Re: Cassian Humphreys leaving stubs in Arbor Age Articles? Can we get a little clarity in this thread please? I happen to know Cassian personally and whilst he and his training program need no defending by me....it stands up perfectly well on its own merits...let me simply state this anyone who has ever met Cassian will very quickly realise two things ....he doesn't consider himself an expert, he sees himself as continually learning and developing on the ideas and concepts of people like Shigo and Mattheck ....he is absolutely passionate about the arboriculturally correct approach to tree care especially when it envolves very troublesome issues like utility-tree conflicts I doubt very much if Cassian would have the time or the inclination to join the forum and contribute...he's spent the last three years (at least) developing his training package to make a very significant contribution to the improvement in how trees are managed in proximity to electrical services. Just so all reading are clear IMO the position of the white line is out too far and yes looks like a typo/editing error since the two green arrows also seem out, the red line cuts into the top of the BBR not a great idea! Which of the two would I prefer if there were such a contrived decision to make? Don't cut into the BBR. We've been here before Eric in the codominant stem thread...if the final cut is 10/20mm out leaving 10/20mm of branch tissue thats preferrable to me than exposing stem tissues...as Guy has pointed out Shigo did not want us to be applying some inflexible one size fits every tree, rather understanding the principals of tree biology and applying them to each tree we work on. As Ive tried to make clear Cassian has spent years taking Shigo's work and fitting into a training package for supervisors of utility tree crews, trust me its a typo! __________________ Sean Trees are poems that earth writes upon the sky, We fell them down and turn them into paper, That we may record our emptiness. - Kahlil Gibran

19th December 2007, 02:38 PM	#24
a_lopa Sponsor Join Date: Jan 2007 Location: Australia Posts: 1,169	Re: Cassian Humphreys leaving stubs in Arbor Age Articles? Personally i dont think its a typo,But i could be wrong... __________________ Free Tree Industry Link Directory www.drouintreeservices.com.au

19th December 2007, 04:02 PM	#25
Ekka Admin - Dip Arb & Hort Join Date: Jan 2007 Location: Brisbane Posts: 9,094	Re: Cassian Humphreys leaving stubs in Arbor Age Articles? It's not good enough a pic Guy, we need to see the top of it too and see where callus is growing. Even dead branches that dont get cut off end up with extended collars, the wood will continue to grow out and over for eternity. What the deal is with that one cant be seen from the ground, and may involve removing some of the old bark to expose the new tissue beneath. Here's an example where the stem was cut to square and the resultant callus wood has some distance to grow. Tis this shot we dont have Guy. And till I peeled of the dead old bark we couldn't see the new tissue. __________________ Arborist Training in Australia\| Your Free Helping Guide Free Tree and Green Industry Deep Link Directory ... Yes, I also SEO (Optimize) and build websites that fly high in Google Qualified Brisbane Tree Lopping \| Stump Grinding and Stump Removal Brisbane Brisbane - Gold Coast Tree Care, Consulting, Developer, Tree and Arborist Reports Consumers, insist on a Tree World member, they're visible and accessible. Look for this badge Members, click here for details on how you can acquire one for your website.

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