Abstract
“TREE Wounds and Diseases” is a popular account of the nature and treatment of the ailments and injuries to which trees are liable, and may serve as an introduction to more scientific treatises like Hartig's “Diseases of Trees” and Gillanders's “Forest Entomology.” To one branch of the subject, practical tree-surgery, Mr. Webster pays more attention than these authors, who wrote from the sylviculturist's point of view. The forester handling large masses of woodland aims at the retention of only healthy and well-formed trees, from which sound timber will be ultimately “harvested, and accordingly removes in his thinning operations all decaying, deformed, and injured trees. The arboriculturist is concerned with the preservation of trees for shade and ornament rather than for future use as timber, and is often called upon to repair decay and ward off impending dangers from historic and ornamental trees in-parks and towns. Mr. Webster, as a practical man with considerable experience, discusses in three short chapters such problems as the filling of hollow trunks, the support of heavy branches Iby iron bands and connecting rods, the guying of limbs to prevent splitting, and the pruning of diseased trees. He cites examples of old and decaying trees to which careful treatment has given a new lease of life, such as the elms in Regent's Park, the chestnuts in Greenwich Park, and the Wilberforce oak in Holwood Park, Kent. His remarks upon the numerous injurious influences to which trees are exposed in towns deserve attention, some of these not being gener ally known, as the escape of gas, which often causes the sudden and mysterious death of previously healthy trees. Piling earth round the stem, as is sometimes done in street improvements, may also prove fatal.
Tree Wounds and Diseases: Their Prevention and Treatment, with a special chapter on Fruit Trees.
By A. D. Webster. Pp. xx + 215. (London: Williams and Norgate, 1916.) Price 7s. 6d. net.
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Tree Wounds and Diseases: Their Prevention and Treatment, with a special chapter on Fruit Trees . Nature 98, 427 (1917). https://doi.org/10.1038/098427a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/098427a0