Hi,

Before I take a saw to 3 trees growing over a 6" shared sewer on my land,
are there any good tree data books anyone can recommend which indicate how
pervasive (spread) and deep roots of various species tend to go?

eg I have one tree of a species I don't know which must come down because
its 4" trunk is about to crack the wall of a drain pit. Small tree so easy
enough...

But I also have an Ash and an apple tree of some sort right over the drain
pipe further down, which runs about 3-4 foot under the surface. So I need to
make an intelligent decision as to whether either is a risk.

I'm also interested in the potential spread - having just had an almighty
(probably) leylandii (or some sort of fast growing evergreen) felled at some
expense - it was within 2m of the house dropping bits into the gutters and I
later found roots about 2" thick heading towards the rather insubstantial
foundations. Based on the root-spread = branch span rule of thumb, I came
out of it rather well as I would have expected worse.

So I feel I need to start understanding trees a bit more! ;-

Many thanks for any pointers.

Cheers

Tim

--
Tim Watts

Managers, politicians and environmentalists: Nature's carbon buffer.