Hacks in your area? Let's see what they've done...

quercus

Since there is alot of hacking going on nowadays, and I've been very busy planning a fair and dedicating a part of it to education of people and how it shouldn't be done, I thought it'd be nice to see what kinda hackers you guys have around.

I've got about 500 pics... So here are my first.

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azrael

500 pics...how demoralising.

quercus

I've got a lot more actually, today I saw a tree that really really tops all hackers pics. Gonna go get a pic tomorrow.

Jeff Darby

It is definately a world wide pandemic,This type of malpratice upsets me enough here,Some of those trees...(trunks)..are on public land council should be able to find out who responsable and prosecute these mongrels!

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TreeDimensional

We were called to remove this tree after it failed in a moderate wind. The original damage was caused by a contractor, who was adding the second story to the cabin. The contractor cut one of the co-dominant leads. There was a stub left which ozzed flux for years. The final blow was when the sap-sucker decided to make a home in the tree. Moral of the story, if your going to hire a contactor to add on to a house, why wouldn't you hire a contractor to look at yours trees, you can pay a little now or pay a lot later. Not to mention the risk to the public at large. Here is the result.

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Steve Tipton

And possible decrease in property value due to the loss of a significant tree.

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Heightmaster

Eric Frei

LOL, these are a pigeon pair.

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Jamie Myers

got a few pics somewhere. these trees are owned by the local authority?????

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Eric Frei

That's not even a pollard, that's just crap.

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quercus

actually there are some 200 like these in my direct area (within 1km) , even in front of my hedge and my lawn!!!! The city is the owner of these trees.

Done it

Now I can see why you go off a bit about things there, what was the reason? are there power lines we can't see or something.

Eric Frei

That's bloody terrible, that's way worse than here! What the hell sort of thinking is that?

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Sean Freeman

I like to call such interpretive work bollarding...they have created a bollard out of the tree. I've seen plenty of examples of bollarding up here.

quercus

I'll get more pics for you today... no power lines, no traffic problems, no things in immediate surroundings, no nothing... just pure hack-work by the city workers. When I e-mailed them they said that I wasn't a pro and knew nothing about it!!!!

Sean Freeman

Hmmmm I'd be asking them just what their definition of a "pro" is then???

quercus

some-one who is all but an arborist, I guess.

mdvaden

Seems that I only have one topping image, of a Japanese maple for my photo album. The reason I don't take more, is that most of us know what a topped tree looks like. Some topping occurs here, but less.

There's a big property I may photograph this week, where a whole row was topped. I just wanted it to illustrate how someone can spot topping from a mile away, via the clear horizonal line of transition of branch density. You know - when a whole row was topped at the same height.

But it can be seen from a half mile to a mile away for the next 30 years, even if the trees are never topped again.

The inside cross-cut dissections are what I find interesting. That's where we can see some internal damage.

Here's one I've used before. The removed branch was a bit huge, not sure who cut it and when. But the tree started to isolate the decay. But the dark stain from the topping cut higher up, goes on indefinitely. The decay from the topping cut was like 10 feet from top to bottom. This was just a small section.

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TreeDimensional

Mario, thats a great picture. Dr. Kim Coder made a statement at a conferance that I attended. He said "what ever you do, try not to make too large a pruning wounds", your picture shows the answer why his statement is true.

Dr. Coder didn't elaborate on the ramifications of large wounds, but left us to use our own brains to come up with the answer. In a brief conversation with him a year later, I was able to test my conclusion, I got it mostly correct. His reply was to the effect that it is un-wise to reduce a large limb back to the main trunk when there is protection zone fibres to heartwood. This type of pruning is usually the result of mis or under managed trees.

We were pruning American elm trees for a town a few years back, and got to a set of 7 previusly topped trees, it takes forever to restore the crown, and they still look, and structurally are poor trees. If you can manage and prune trees properly from the get-go, everyone and thing benefits.

Jeff Darby

Us dumb old Arbs would not have a chance against these professional HACKS...My typeing peckers near on chucked typeing this..LOL...Very sad indeed.

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quercus

I said I had some more pics... So here are a few, but the ones in this post I took today. I actually drove 9 minutes on my motorcycle and stopped at every site where a tree was topped. Turned out to be 125 topped trees in 9 minutes.

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quercus

Not done yet... Not even close...
All of these pictures were taken 50 meters away from the ones in the last post. It's a parking lot of a supermarket and all these trees are done by the same hack. Some 50 or so topped at 1 parking lot. There's actually one tree that hasn't been touched, and that's the one I'm gonna steal for my yard!!! check it out in the next post!!!
Do you see the large topped willows? I have to look at them every day because I see them from my rear terrace.

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Sean Freeman

Well, well it would really seem as if the Belgians love bollarding even more than the Queenslanders!!!!
Quite remarkable that in this day local Authorities are still paying for that kind of rubbish.....we are all engaged in the same struggle with the forces of ignorance and self important apparatchiks

Jeff Darby

This is sick, Who ever green lighted this needs to see a shrink!....It looks like a scene out of Horoshima..Only the Burbs were spared!

Gallahs...Shame...Shame....Shame.....This turned my stomach!

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Arboriculture, A life long study for some, a passing phase for others

© Jeffrey J Darby 2011

quercus

Now this is the one wich I plan on stealing... So they can't hack it. Man I wish I had a treespade. It is actually the only one on the parking lot that hasn't been hacked...

This Sequoiadendron has the rooting abilities of a potplant.... I guess the landscapers had mistaken it for a small conifer....

Then I went into the city... and coaught a few city hackers (guys in orange) whom had recently (minutes ago) finished a job. They saw me taking pics of their work, and I could tell by the look on their faces that they were very pleased and satisfied.
The hacked trees whom are next to the large building are Tilia Cordata's. They are 180 years old and can be found on very old pictures in the musuem. Needless to say that they are worthless now, huh? The building is the police station. This is the work of a "tree-surgeon" who's doing this line of hacking (can't say work) for over 26 years....
He's still doing this , along with two sons. He literally mutilated 1000's and 1000's of trees in his carreer. I'm beginning to wonder if he knows another type of pruning!!! he can't climb but has big rigs and trucks. I can tell he's doing OK financially.

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TREE-SURFER

Quercus, you have indirectly maddened me here.(Cos I hate this sort of Cr4p)

In the UK:-
A house-holder cannot even change a wall power socket, they have to get a quallied electrician in to do it for them.

A house-holder cannot work on their gas boiler (even if they do know what they are doing), they have to get a CORGI registered plumber in to do it for them.

A car owner, every year, has to have their vehicle examined by a qualiied mechanic to write a report to say it is safe to use on public roads.

All of the above CAN KILL YOU, but an idiot with a saw can mutilate a tree to the extent that it kills someone in the future when it fails, but hey, that's ok........ take a look at this tree. Looks healthy? the roots were severed.

Both occupants were killed outright when the mother was parking her car in the new carpark......

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azrael

Well.....this type of garbage is just as bad...really stupid landscaping

It's also a car-park. I worry that people would think this was OK to do to trees.

The trees are ALL gone NOW....of course!

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D Mc

The thought of 200 or so of those trees is so appalling we have no words.

Good for you for trying to confront the City. Keep trying. We ran into a situation with one of our cities where they were butchering tree roots during a sidewalk replacement project. Their initial response to our telephone calls was that the "concrete guy said it wouldn't hurt the trees".

We kept at it, phone calls, meetings, confrontations, presentations to the City Council, more phone calls, meetings, confrontations. We finally got the project halted and the job specs changed. (We even bought them a book and took it in for them to read.)

It can be frustrating but someone has to do it or they will never change their thought patterns.

S and D Mc

Sean Freeman

D Mc your experience with the local authority in your area is one well worth retelling again and again persistance pays off...you know you're right we all know you're right, its just the time lag to convince these institutional commissars that can wear you down...your appraoch and even going to the length of providing them with published literature to help get the message across is fabulous.

Jamie Myers

the photos show the result but not the problem, these are many, on the local authority front you often find the tree officer has little or no real practical skills, also the young guns who tend to have the later knowlage are locked into a heirachy system where their ideas are nullified by senior collegues (we ve done it this way for years). the insurance angle is also a problem in all sectors, structual engineers putting specs on trees,home owners who want to protect their own trees are often forced to either hack or fell trees by their own insurance company when there is a subsidence claim when the trees are not really a major factor. L.A. insurance companies overriding officers advice. Heath and Safety (urrrggg) these b'stards don t listen to anyone, they have no qualifications in most of the things they poke their noses into (cut it s top off to make it safer).Poor planing. Inheritance, we in Europe are often called to work on previously hacked trees from an era when topping was considered to be best practice.The list goes on and on and...........................

That s my rant for today

arbdog

It makes you mad looking those pictures, the trees in this town are pruned correctly apart from previous hacking from many years ago. I gotta get a camera and show you Rugby, England. A place with the largest and most maturist trees round here and also a topped/hacked tree every 20 ft.