Post #234172 by Bay Park Buzzy on Fri, May 26, 2006 3:09 PM

Bete asked

Question, what is that black spot between the right cheek and nose, is that part of the wood, like a knot?

Benzart answered

the black spot is a hole. One of many drilled into the tree to save it from the "Lethal Yellowing" disease many years ago.

I looked at those for a long time and was trying to figure it out also. I had a couple of guesses. #1: Some sort of bore #2: Spikes from tree cutter climbing gear #3: Some one drilled out scars from either #1 or #2(because the holes are larger and rounder than I've seen on examples of 1 and 2)

Glad to know the real answer. Locally we have a problem with lerp boring into and killing Eucalyptus trees. I think UC Riverside worked on breeding a wasp that would target and kill the lerp. It would dig into the bark and lay its eggs in the lerp. It was released and tested in eucalyptus laden Rancho Santa Fe. I used to do code enforcement stuff there at the time. During site visits, I would see all kinds of elaborate methods that arborists would devise in futile attempts to rid the trees of the lerp. Holes, poles, poison etc. I talked to one lady who spent thousands per tree to remove all of the soil, treat it with some chemical concoction, and then dump it back in. Nothing worked until the wasps established their colony after a few years. They still have major problems in some areas.

As far as the tree climber spikes, Ben if you allow me for educational purposes to show a good example here on your thread, check this out every one:
Parallel scars left from the climber going up the tree

sometimes I get them in clusters where the worker must have been working in one spot for awhile. I like how you incorproated the scar into the scroll work. One time I had one that ended up on a tooth on the tiki's mouth. It was like a cavity