LSM Tree Advice & Consulting

Lawrence spent many years working as a climbing arborist in the U.K. and in Australia, and that tree experience led him into the corporate world of public liability, where he spent seven years looking after local government clients and large commercial companies on a national level. Eventually he wanted to get back outside, so he went back into the physical world of tree work for a while before taking a Diploma in Arboriculture here in South Australia. The advice you get comes from someone who has been up the tree and has also sat on the side of the desk where somebody has to answer for what a tree did.

We run LSM Tree Advice & Consulting out of Adelaide, South Australia, and there are three things on the list: elm leaf beetle treatment, pest and disease diagnosis, and written pruning specifications. All three are for the tree you already have and want to keep.

If your elm has elm leaf beetle in it, you can see the evidence. The adults chew small shot holes in the leaves, ranging to about a millimetre across, and lay their eggs, and when those hatch the larvae skeletonise the leaf between the veins so the foliage dries up and dies. That will not usually kill an elm, but it weakens the tree and leaves it open to dieback and to attack from other insects and diseases. Every species of elm is a target. In Adelaide the larvae hatch at the beginning of September, and the damage is easiest to see from October to December, once the new foliage is out and the pest is into its first cycle of the season.

What an elm wants is a management plan, not a one-off spray. We typically use stem injections, which put systemic insecticide into the tree to control the beetle numbers and improve the tree's health, and a treatment stays effective for two years. It goes in during September and October and repeats every second year, so the call worth making is the one ahead of September. Pricing works off the tree's diameter at breast height, with its age and vitality taken into account along with whether it carries multiple stems, and we price a group of trees more keenly than a single one.

Where a tree is showing signs of stress and nobody is sure why, our pest and disease help starts with the signs and symptoms actually on display. Diagnosis of these issues can be complex, so we work out the primary and secondary agents contributing to it and then determine a suitable management approach, which may involve biological solutions or integrated pest management strategies. Environmental factors are weighed up in the same assessment, because they are often sitting underneath the pest.

For a highly regarded specimen tree that has to be worked on, we write a pruning specification in line with Australian Standard 4373-2007, setting out exactly what is to be done so the growth habit of the tree is retained. A copy of those requirements goes to contractors during the quoting process, so everyone is pricing the same job and the technical detail is on paper before anyone climbs. Send through a few photos of the tree and we can give you an approximate quote from those, or ring Lawrence and talk it through. If it is an elm, get in touch before September and we can have it treated in the right window.