Phaeolus schweinitzii Butt Rot pics

  • Thread Starter Thread Starter
  • #2
New job pics. Did our last tree task today of a 4 day out of town stint, and drove back to the shop for paperwork and maintenance. Home now.

Doug-fir with P. schweinitzii root and butt decay. Large top broke out previously at about 150'. Used Amsteel and diesel mechanical advantage to tip the tree. Went Stig-style with the 20" bar.

Cutting a high stump leaves a bit of history and habitat, plus the wood is better higher up the stump.

View attachment 32663
View attachment 32662View attachment 32664View attachment 32665View attachment 32666View attachment 32667View attachment 32670View attachment 32669View attachment 32668View attachment 32671
 
  • Thread Starter Thread Starter
  • #3
Latest one we cut due to schweinitzii. Totally dead this year. Grand fir from the looks of it. We used the Silvey tree jack to be more certain of being able to tip it. Lean was really hard to be sure of. It looks fell with the hinge to the lay. It fell from the lean/ gravity, not hydraulic power. Duane pumped it up, and as I cut up the backcut to the hinge, the pressure on the gauge went to zero. The two wedges got loose as I cut it up.


Went KA-POW when it hit across the asphalt road, but did almost no damage. They will be getting asphalt laid in a month or two at a nearby road widening project and will probably get a little touch up, or it might get left.

The computer isn't cooperating with uploading, so I'll leave this as is, and try in another post.

This is the MS441 with a 28" bar for scale.
 

Attachments

  • P1070703.jpg
    P1070703.jpg
    129.6 KB · Views: 35
  • Thread Starter Thread Starter
  • #4
P1070695.jpg P1070698.jpg

Duane's 6'3, 250#. Drilling the tree to check for wood soundness for the felling cut. We had some water fountains and electrical boxes to miss.

Tree was probably 120' with the top already broken out.
 
  • Thread Starter Thread Starter
  • #6
P1070712.jpg P1070702.jpg P1070706.jpg P1070705.jpg

Some of the better pictures are just over 4.0 MB, and won't load.
The first and third pics are the cavity that I easily opened up with the ax in the area just to the right of the camera case and fruiting body in the fourth picture.

The felling cut was in pretty solid wood, but the one foot below had some severe mush. I cut out one of the buttress flares at the base and it was rotting from the underside upward, ram's horn-ing. The ax sounding the trunk sounded like a drum.

I used the 088 with 60" Cannon bar to reach across, after getting the backcut started with the 660 with a 36". Funny how things are relative. After struggling with the big saw to get it into the kerf, the 660 felt light, and the 346xp Husky with the 20" that I used to clean out the face a bit felt like a MS192T.

I'm looking forward to getting to use/ needing both jack cylinders for some tree in the future. Way better than beating a ton a wedges a million times, and no need to try to very carefully cut a $600 piece of 1/2" amsteel pull line from under a huge tree. We left most of the log in place to prevent campers from going out of their site with tents into an area that is replanted, and for habitat, and because nobody wants to cut up a 50" grand fir for firewood.
 
IMG_20160115_153824764[1].jpg

So this 3'+ DBH doug-fir blew out at the ground level. Pretty thin shell of clean wood. I only saw the stump hole, and the butt log pieces. I don't know what the tree looked like before. That's a broken brown root to the left. 8.5x11 sheet of paper for size reference, maybe 1' below grade. Tipped to the right, where the clean wood shows well.







This tree, a couple feet from the main building, near the main entrance is looking terrible from a mile away. None of the dead branches show in this picture, really. The campus has been deadwooded from a lift by the Grounds crew, making assessments a bit more tricky. IMG_20160116_123537692_HDR[1].jpg
IMG_20160114_121629760[1].jpg


Does sound rind thickness play into root disease as a reliable indicator. You're pretty much drilling the trunk, not the roots. The root crown at best. Nothing left of the root crown from this tree.

Lots of schweinitzii around.

Bunch of heavily Phellinus pini-conked trees, too.

Back to look at more, tomorrow.
 
If sounding reveals a big hollow, then drilling may be justified. But digging may give better info on root crowns. Ps, tough pest!
 
Back
Top