November 30th, 2015: Sweet Chestnut Tree

[monster]

This amazing tree is one of Britain's Eleven Most Legendary Trees

This impressive sweet chestnut is found on the grounds of Kateshill House in Bewdley, Worcestershire. The girth is currently over 10m and growing, with a spread of over a quarter of an acre, with one branch extending over 23m from the tree. It was reputedly planted in the middle of the 16th Century.

The Marcle Yew featured in the article is also pretty impressive, but needs huge googly eyes IMO. This one looks like something out of Pirates of the Caribbean or Harry Potter. I would love a tree like this in my yard, even if there wasn't room for anything else, including my house.....


Picture Credit: The Tree Council

[limey]

Yabbut the Marcle Yew could BE your house!

[Griff]

Plant yours today!

[glatt]

It's amazing to see those trees keep going and going. Around here, when a tree starts to die off in sections, we take it down. Looks like those have been dying for hundreds of years, but left to their own devices and they just keep hanging on. Some of them look terribly unhealthy. Like the Cage Pollard Beech which is about 95% rotted out and supported only by a few inches of live growth here and there while the rest of it is disintegrated and long gone.


I guess once you don't cut it down and enough time goes by, it's historical and then you wouldn't dream of cutting it down.

[xoxoxoBruce]

Around here, when a tree starts to die off in sections, we take it down.

Except people who have a big tree that branches into three leaders, and when one falls crushing their house they do nothing. Then the second falls nearly killing them and still do nothing.

[lumberjim]

I expect weather has a deal to do with it. Hurricanes and tornadoes and blizzards are rough on trees over here.

[xoxoxoBruce]

I knew a guy who called his insurance company and suggested it would be cheaper for them to pay to have the tree taken down, than pay for his neighbors house when it falls. They said Nope, and since we can prove you know it's bad we're off the hook.

[lumberjim]

Insurance companies are the devil

[Gravdigr]

Around here, the insurance companies will pay to take a tree down occasionally, if it's really a danger. They'll have another guy come in and give his opinion on the situation.

I've done it several times.

[Snakeadelic]

Insurance companies are the devil

SO RIGHT.
My neighbor was in an accident in mid-October, at which time he was on his not-even-a-year-old Harley trike. A pickup truck in front of him started to move out with traffic on a green light, then slammed to a stop. The guy with the truck, it turns out...

1. Didn't have a license.
2. Didn't actually know what a driver's license is.
3. Appeared to be, um, "mentally unfit for complex tasks". Also appeared to be about 30.
4. Could only give his father's contact info.
5. Was known by name by the cops.
6. Left the scene before the cops could get there--most of the info the insurance company wanted was gathered by firefighters who saw the wreck and stopped to help.
7. Was apparently looking for "the ice cream store" and slammed on the brakes because he was on a 5-lane highway that had no other lights until the south end of Missoula at least 8 miles up the road.

According to the fire department, police, and everyone who's even heard the story, this dude either needs LOTS of outpatient help or needs to be institutionalized. According to my neighbor's insurance company, guess who's at fault? Yep, it turned out to be "You are so lucky the frame is intact because otherwise we'd total it, and since IT IS YOUR FAULT we would not help you replace your $27K Harley." If you hit an incompetent, unlicensed driver from behind because of their illegal driving behavior, YOU are at fault because you hit them from behind, end of story.

So yes, insurance companies have long been on my list of industries I have suspected are demonically connected!

We're losing all our big trees . The tree where I photographed a peregrine falcon, gone. The tree where I photographed a bald eagle one New Year's Eve, gone. The trees where the kestrels used to nest across the street from the falcon tree and down the block from the eagle tree, gone. Even one of the not-so-huge landscaping trees at the apartments I live in blew over this spring. The others were all cottonwoods, famous for growing fast, rotting fast, and dying relatively young. All the big ones on the county fairgrounds were taken down several years ago after a falling branch nailed some poor girl's car to the road while she and her best friend were inside and it was in motion, so yes, they're dangerous.

According to the local arborist, every single big cottonwood in the Bitterroot Valley is doomed. Since he's the kind of guy who hates topping trees (it kills just about all of them, since they grow from the top) and won't take a big tree down until AFTER baby-bird season, I'm kind of inclined to trust him. He says the more we pull out of the aquifers under this valley, the faster we're losing trees whose taproots are not long or sturdy enough to reach down to the new water levels. Thank heavens I don't have to live in the San Joaquin Valley!

[Clodfobble]

Originally Posted by Snakeadelic

If you hit an incompetent, unlicensed driver from behind because of their illegal driving behavior, YOU are at fault because you hit them from behind, end of story.

Okay, but--and I'm not taking away any of the awfulness of the other driver here, dude is obviously wacked out and should be under supervision--but... If you hit a regular, normal driver from behind because they slammed on the brakes to avoid a little kid that ran out into the intersection... then yeah, you are at fault. I mean, it sucks that mentally challenged guys like him sometimes get out of the house, but it sucks that little kids are stupid enough to run into traffic sometimes too. Why the guy slammed on his brakes shouldn't honestly be relevant. You've got to be prepared to stop in an emergency, you know?