The Turnbuckle a newly recorded phenomenon in Eucalypts or just a fantasay?

Cassian Humphreys

Gents I think we know each other well enough now to know we are passionate about our craft, a tad arrogant (if we are not careful), but reasonably evolved I would say. From what I have seen so far I think we heard Shigo's call - muscle and brain......

Well with this post I am inviting you to put on your thinking caps, put judgment aside and consider it is possible I am on to something here.
Truth is wether I am or not matters none, if the turnbuckle is a fantasy and I am wrong well I really do not care as I have nothing to lose by being inquisitive and open to possibilities.

The fact is Shigo afflicted me with his call, and I am now hooked on the science of trees, I believe that I have interpreted his and Matteck's work well enough to be very right in my assumptions. The turnbuckle is a theory that history will prove true. If that is the case then I am the first arborist to make a scientific discovery (whoopie dah) - we humans get caught up with bollocks.

To me the turnbuckle as with other bio-mechanical symptoms and the biochemistry of trees is genius, but not human genius, we hav'nt created this - the tree has. My comittment is to the genius of the tree not to the size of my sword.

So gents I invite you to help me unravel a possibility, attached is my third draft on the turnbuckle, study it, question me over it and help me with the
4th draft. The 3rd draft contains a diagrammatic representation of how I percieve a cross section of the turnbuckle would be.
In the 4th I will have an actual cross section (if I can gain permission to fell the tree). Its all about rolling ribs and the optimisation of v forks or bifurcated branch forks.

Note – The phenomenon of rolling ribs mechanically acting as a turnbuckle appears to be random, as in my experience of all species cited the conventional growth of reaction wood producing pointy nosed and snub nosed ribs (as recorded by Mattheck) is the norm. Based on study of trees as evolving systems I believe that Eucalypts are in the process of evolving the `turnbuckle’ as part of their success story, quantifying that is impossible at this time without the ability to study Eucalypts of the future, but will make an interesting study for future arborists. I ardently believe the evidence covered in these case studies is more than significant enough to obtain funding for a research project.

Gents bare in mind I shared this doc with ISA America and the Australian Chapter, to my surprise I heard nothing.

Regardless I am keen for you to hook in, I am busy this coming week and am away with my sons this coming weekend.

Great to know you - my utter regards Cassian...



http://www.treeworld.info/manualuploads/snubrolling.pdf

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Cut through life's drama - With Instinct as your steel and Logic as your temper...

Eric Frei

Self optimization at it's best, although trees dont think they got some other "instinct" thing going on.

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Sean Freeman

Certainly got some ideas views on it Cassian, but want to back it up with some pics so prob won't be able to post a meaningful reply for a week or two (down GC next week)...I think it is self optimization in a sense but driven more by the canopy movement above than the defect/weakness below, which is why you're only seeing this in a few Eucs....like I said I want to illustrate this and bung some pretty lines etc.

Cassian Humphreys

Hi Eric I agree, I reckon untill we can quantify tree instinct - we can only use human terms as a way to describe aspects of the tree system that have to be, though we can't yet 'get'...

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Cut through life's drama - With Instinct as your steel and Logic as your temper...

Cassian Humphreys

Sean the way I see it the turnbuckle is occuring (like the wood ribs Mattheck describes) as a result of lever arm impacting on the weak link (the V fork), the stress recieved in the fork occurs because of the canopy movement.

In response to those stresses the cambium layer (the stress reciever/recorder) instigates rib formation - in the case of the rolling ribs they are acting in the same way as normal ribs but (due to the physics of the turnbuckle) exert a higher level of pressure on the included crack, therefore making the V fork stronger. This explains the Iron bark (Fig 20/21) the turnbuckle on this tree has held the fork in check for a number of years...

I believe the reason that the turnbuckle (rolling ribs) is random is because this is an example of a snap shot of evolution, that in the future this will become the norm for Eucalypts...........

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Cut through life's drama - With Instinct as your steel and Logic as your temper...