Tree Morphogenesis book 1 - free deownload - seeking feedback

[jefflovstrom]

20% ? wow
Jeff

 

[Pelorus]

Possible alternative title: "The Art of Subtle Reductions for Fun and $$$"
Or, "Crown Lifting for Dummies"

 

[Mitchell]

tree guys and science

I viewed a You-Tube vid by the OP which showed some foliage being removed from an oak tree via one-handed chain saw technique.
Wondering if he could provide some documented scientific link that a 5 - 20% canopy reduction will result in his Morphovictim withstanding a wind event better than a non-reduced identical tree.

I haven't read the book or don't know the subject matter; but ill give it a fair shake.

The key note speaker at the ISA Toronto event this year basically said we don't know squat about trees, particularly where bio mechanics are concerned. Some of the other lectures were examining the role of canopy reductions in reducing failures. The preliminary findings were suggesting benefit from pruning to preventing failure. Pretty hard and expensive to prove that empirically. In my own practice I antidotally find tip reduction (not the popular knocking every third branch off thinning) helps tall west cost trees with stand wind events. Although as the lectures on resonance studies this year suggested, proving those thoughts scientifically is a gigantic undertaking.

Im thinking if a fellow wants to share his experiences and thoughts its a good thing. I found the PHDs at the conference were not in tune with working arborists (which is to be expected; they spend there days in classrooms we spend it in trees). Will be better off if more of us try to quantify what we experience.

 

[imagineero]

Maybe I'm missing something. I watched the video but it just looked like a standard crown lift and thin to me, and nothing special at that. It also wasn't really all that subtle either. Removals are our bread and butter, but we also do long term strategic weight reduction mostly on council/public trees and some in private gardens. It's very subtle work and most people wouldn't be able to tell that anything was done. 20% would be a sever reduction but none of it would be localised; it's spread out around the tree.

I'll give your book a read through if/when it comes available and give you some feedback if you're interested. You'll find arboristsite to be a place full of tough love.

Shaun

 

[Tree Morphogene]

Maybe I'm missing something. I watched the video but it just looked like a standard crown lift and thin to me, and nothing special at that. It also wasn't really all that subtle either. Removals are our bread and butter, but we also do long term strategic weight reduction mostly on council/public trees and some in private gardens. It's very subtle work and most people wouldn't be able to tell that anything was done. 20% would be a sever reduction but none of it would be localised; it's spread out around the tree.

I'll give your book a read through if/when it comes available and give you some feedback if you're interested. You'll find arboristsite to be a place full of tough love.

Shaun

Hi Shaun

As you will read, I consider my fiercest critic to be the person from whom I have most to learn.

In fact that is a business ethic that has served me well.

So if tough love is all you got for me, bring it on. I have laid out 28 years of insights, investigation, experiment and more importantly, coming directly from all that, I bring solutions.

Those solutions, are based on how I believe trees have evolved, how they have been designed by that evolution and how that evolution has designed them to deal with fluctuating climatic conditions and periodic extreme winds in a passive dynamic way.

Given that the climate seems to be changing so that we can expect more extreme weather extremes, I have to suggest that understanding the conceptual model described in my book is essential for Arborists everywhere.

I am really looking forward to discussing all of that in detail with you all, once you have read my book.

Last thing. bear in mind I am a contractor. I have been training these techniques and selling them to customers for 28 years. Implicit in that is how I explain trees and this whole strategy to tree owners in just a few minutes. Give people understanding and they never forget you, and they will usually ask for your opinion and quote, that is why I still provide the service.

It is free next week and I can't change that, but I would love to get stuck in earlier, so until then I just dropped the price to $4.99 (may take sthe rest of the day to change in case any of you want to get a preview, read it and then we can get on with discussions with everything out on the table.

There is a video of us doing an RVT and crown lift to an Oak on another thread. The rationale for that job is written in the commentary under that video on Youtube and if you watch it I urge you to make sure that you watch that last 30 seconds because that is where the still images are stacked for you to compare them. Just do a Google search for Tree Morphogenesis and you will find that video on the first page.

Like you said, keep an open mind and simply decide to give me 2 hours of your valuable time, to read my book. I won't waste your time.

 

[imagineero]

I find thinning to be a hard sell. Customers generally want trimming for a specific purpose; building clearance, powerline clearance, crown lifting, to gain a view etc. Few people value their trees enough to invest in maintenance pruning with a view to long term retention. Trees are intelligent enough that they generally sort themselves out anyhow, trees in high wind areas grow in such a way as to be more resistant to wind loads. You can't prepare every tree for that 100 year storm, that's just part of nature. Trees in the urban environment are a completely artificial construct anyhow. In my opinion the vast majority of urban trees will get just as much life without maintenance pruning as those who have none. There are plenty of exceptions though.

Some specific species of trees will gain an extended life from thinning, but it's very species dependant and location dependant. I find it's mostly of benefit to trees growing in isolation, and in particular to trees that have insufficient taper in their scaffold and tend to grow foliage mostly or only at the tips. Branches that have foliage distributed broadly along their length and exhibit taper tend to have a lot more flex, and their weight decreases in proportion to their length. If they're in a high wind/high risk area they can benefit from evenly distributed weight reduction which also has the added benefit of reducing wind sail, but it's still debatable about whether you increase the overall life of the tree when you factor in the reduction in foliage equating to reduced ability to produce energy and all the wounds you've opened up on the tree. That reduction in vigor on the one hand seems to extend tree life because of reduced weight, on the other hand to decrease it because of reduced energy for growing reaction wood, on the other hand to increase it because it will probably slow down the growth rate of the tree, on the other hand decrease it because of possibly increasing the chances for insects/disease etc... There are far too many things to consider. Even if the question was as simple as "how can I generally extend the life of a tree?" it wouldn't be an easy one to answer and would be very species/location dependent. The real question isn't even that simple though in my opinion.

On many older/heritage trees we get called in too late. At that point you're just delaying the inevitable. The best time for corrective pruning is much much earlier. Or even before that, choosing good specimens to plant.

It's not possible to draw absolute conclusions in my opinion, there haven't been enough long term studies done that think in 'tree time'.

Shaun

 

[imagineero]

I guess what I should have said instead of "tough love" is "openly suspicious and occasionally hostile" ;-)

There's plenty of knowledge on here... Plenty of guys with ISA/related arb quals, who've read all the books and been to the courses. Plenty of guys also who have a lifetime worth of experience and a lot of tree sense. Lots of the talk is just general ribbing and shop banter, but we have some involved discussion also. It's all in the archives if you're interested. Most of the guys are going to judge you on what you present, which seems fair enough, and what you've presented is a couple posts saying "hey, look at my book, I want peer review". It's obviously too late to get peer review now that the book is published. The time for that would have been during writing/editing. Which makes your post seem more like a marketing ploy than anything else, especially when it's more like "hey, look at my book which will be free for a couple days next week but you can buy it now". Until your name ranks up along side Shigo, Dent, Beranek, Mattheck, Matheny etc, people aren't going to buy it, or even read it for free.

I read your website, which just sounded like so much fluff, and watched your video which seemed amateur to me. If I had to sum it up in 21 words or less, it would be "I like to cut the part of the tree which sticks out the most. That's how I make the tree smaller". Don't get me wrong, it was a fair pruning job, just nothing really noteworthy. That certainly doesn't sound anywhere near as fancy as "Reduction Via Thinning", especially if you capitalise each word as though they had special hidden meaning. It wasn't really what I'd call reduction via thinning anyhow; thinning generally doesn't imply reduction in size, only in density. Your technique would more suitably be termed "reduction via pruning" and since there's no way I know of to reduce a tree without pruning it, then you could get rid of some redundancy there and just call it reduction, or pruning, with normal lowercase letters. Not as sexy, I know, but it's just pruning.

I read the first couple chapters of your book on amazon, just what was available in the preview It certainly didn't inspire me to buy the book, which according your your own writings you ought to be giving away anyhow. As written in your own book description;

"Trees gave the author a career which enabled him to raise his family for which he feels profoundly indebted to trees. This book is one way that he is starting to repay that debt."

But something more than that bothers me. Having read the first chapter, and part of the second, I can't help but feel it's just a bunch of drivel. A mixture of scientology, amway, and "how to win friends and influence people". I probably should have expected that, by your own admission;

"Some of my theories are not "scientifically" tested, or at least, not rigorously and independently tested. They are just my own beliefs and are based almost entirely on my own seat of the pants observations which fuelled my further research and testing in the field."

I look forward to reading the rest of it though.

Shaun

 

[Tree Morphogene]

I guess what I should have said instead of "tough love" is "openly suspicious and occasionally hostile" ;-)

I look forward to reading the rest of it though.

Shaun

Hi Shaun

I take all of your criticism to heart but until you have read the book, lets put that aside.

All I ask is that you keep an open mind and see if I am able to surprise you at all.

The technicalities start in Chapter 2 through 9, 10 summarises then five case histories and an epilogue.


You guys were always going to be the test.

 

[Tree Morphogene]

there haven't been enough long term studies done that think in 'tree time'.

Shaun

I hope that you might reconsider this assertion when you have read my book.

 

[Tree Morphogene]

I viewed a You-Tube vid by the OP which showed some foliage being removed from an oak tree via one-handed chain saw technique.
Wondering if he could provide some documented scientific link that a 5 - 20% canopy reduction will result in his Morphovictim withstanding a wind event better than a non-reduced identical tree.

Well I hope that I have included details of why I decided on such limits that will make common sense to you but to be honest, I don't think they constitute scientific proofs.

In fact, although I discuss this issue from a number of different perspectives, mathematical, physiological and experiential, they are probably more accurately described as hypotheses requiring further experimentation.

There are a number of such threads in this work and I hope to attract other Arborists and researchers to help me to complete these investigations and thereby complete the Tree Morphogenesis Project (to the satisfaction of the scientific community). I know how I want to test these techniques and I have identified the likely location and form of the measurable signals that will lead to a proof.

In fact, this project is made for crowd sourcing....

 

[imagineero]

There are a number of such threads in this work and I hope to attract other Arborists and researchers to help me to complete these investigations and thereby complete the Tree Morphogenesis Project (to the satisfaction of the scientific community). I know how I want to test these techniques and I have identified the likely location and form of the measurable signals that will lead to a proof.

Care to elaborate?

 

[Tree Morphogene]

Care to elaborate?

Yes definately, but only once you have read it.

 

[imagineero]

If you're serious about getting peer review and wanting arborists to help you with testing your theories and gathering data, then you ought to make a copy of your work available in PDF format to those you'd like to get review from. None of this 'wait till next week and get it free for 2 days but you'll have to install a reader on your machine' etc etc nonsense.

Shaun

 

[sgreanbeans]

I guess what I should have said instead of "tough love" is "openly suspicious and occasionally hostile" ;-)

There's plenty of knowledge on here... Plenty of guys with ISA/related arb quals, who've read all the books and been to the courses. Plenty of guys also who have a lifetime worth of experience and a lot of tree sense. Lots of the talk is just general ribbing and shop banter, but we have some involved discussion also. It's all in the archives if you're interested. Most of the guys are going to judge you on what you present, which seems fair enough, and what you've presented is a couple posts saying "hey, look at my book, I want peer review". It's obviously too late to get peer review now that the book is published. The time for that would have been during writing/editing. Which makes your post seem more like a marketing ploy than anything else, especially when it's more like "hey, look at my book which will be free for a couple days next week but you can buy it now". Until your name ranks up along side Shigo, Dent, Beranek, Mattheck, Matheny etc, people aren't going to buy it, or even read it for free.

I read your website, which just sounded like so much fluff, and watched your video which seemed amateur to me. If I had to sum it up in 21 words or less, it would be "I like to cut the part of the tree which sticks out the most. That's how I make the tree smaller". Don't get me wrong, it was a fair pruning job, just nothing really noteworthy. That certainly doesn't sound anywhere near as fancy as "Reduction Via Thinning", especially if you capitalise each word as though they had special hidden meaning. It wasn't really what I'd call reduction via thinning anyhow; thinning generally doesn't imply reduction in size, only in density. Your technique would more suitably be termed "reduction via pruning" and since there's no way I know of to reduce a tree without pruning it, then you could get rid of some redundancy there and just call it reduction, or pruning, with normal lowercase letters. Not as sexy, I know, but it's just pruning.

I read the first couple chapters of your book on amazon, just what was available in the preview It certainly didn't inspire me to buy the book, which according your your own writings you ought to be giving away anyhow. As written in your own book description;

"Trees gave the author a career which enabled him to raise his family for which he feels profoundly indebted to trees. This book is one way that he is starting to repay that debt."

But something more than that bothers me. Having read the first chapter, and part of the second, I can't help but feel it's just a bunch of drivel. A mixture of scientology, amway, and "how to win friends and influence people". I probably should have expected that, by your own admission;

"Some of my theories are not "scientifically" tested, or at least, not rigorously and independently tested. They are just my own beliefs and are based almost entirely on my own seat of the pants observations which fuelled my further research and testing in the field."

I look forward to reading the rest of it though.

Shaun

I quoted this so I could like it again, but I cant, so I wont, but I still like it.......again

 

[imagineero]

There are so many complex moral issues confronting arborists today.

Should I be allowed to 'like' my own post? If not, is it wrong for me to 'like' a post which is just a quote of my own post? If not, is it acceptable to work out reciprocal deals with other AS members to quote each other's posts so we can 'like' ourselves?

Shaun

 

[Pelorus]

Well I hope that I have included details of why I decided on such limits that will make common sense to you but to be honest, I don't think they constitute scientific proofs.

In fact, although I discuss this issue from a number of different perspectives, mathematical, physiological and experiential, they are probably more accurately described as hypotheses requiring further experimentation.

There are a number of such threads in this work and I hope to attract other Arborists and researchers to help me to complete these investigations and thereby complete the Tree Morphogenesis Project (to the satisfaction of the scientific community). I know how I want to test these techniques and I have identified the likely location and form of the measurable signals that will lead to a proof.

In fact, this project is made for crowd sourcing....

I refuse to prescribe unnecessary work, or work of an uncertain or dubious value to clients who invest their trust and finances in my company. I would likewise not expect a gullible public to fund experimental work on their trees at their expense.
Wondering if you have posted your theories / videos on other discussion boards, and what the general impression has been from other "working arborists" (I have not noticed anything posted elsewhere).

 

[treesmith]

Shaun hit the nail, PDF book download for AS members and you'll get all the feedback you could ever want. Personally, I like the idea and want to read it for myself.

 

[TheJollyLogger]

Shaun hit the nail, PDF book download for AS members and you'll get all the feedback you could ever want. Personally, I like the idea and want to read it for myself.

Shaun is pretty good with a hammer... generally nails it...

 

[imagineero]

When your only tool is a hammer, everything looks like a nail

 

[treesmith]

Ok, just read the free bit and first impression is that it's a bit fluffy. Spends a lot of time telling that it's going to tell us what it is that it will tell us and how it will tell us but without actually telling us, very similar to that last sentance in fact. It's the intro so I can understand filler and a small book never seems as valuable as an enormous tome but, it can be annoying to read and harder to understand. Haven't read the rest yet as it is still chargeable but will as soon as possible. As I said before, I really like the idea, could be a very good thing. I love trees and the more understanding we have, then all the better for the trees and us as well.