EDITORIAL

I would like to start by congratulating Tom Hall on reaching the milestone of his eightieth birthday. Tom was fundamental to the journal's creation and continues to provide a valuable service collating book reviews, information from the UK Forestry Commission and from other publication received. A personal thank you for all your help, Tom, both now and in the future. Another founder member, Professor John Anderson, has announced his retirement and I would like to thank him on behalf of the editorial board for his service to the journal and wish him luck for the future. He will be replaced by Dr Ian Rotherham of Sheffield Hallam University. Ian has been instrumental in bringing about number of important seminars and contributions to journals in recent years and I am sure he will be an asset to the journal. In November I was lucky enough to be invited to 'Life Within and Beneath the Tree', the third in the Treework Environmental Practice's series of seminars 'Exploring Innovations in Arboriculture'. It focused on the physiological needs of trees and fungi as individuals, whilst exploring the ways in which the two are inextricably linked. The two days were packed full of information and debate and the people at Treework should be commended, as should the Arboricultural Association for their support. There were two points that stuck in my mind. Firstly, the complexity of the systems in which trees and fungi live and of which they are just a small part. Secondly, that much of what was said was scientific common sense and as individual pieces of information 'nothing new' but the trick was to bring the pieces of information together to give an holistic and rounded vision of the roles, needs, and interactions of some individuals of a complex system. There was however, plenty that was new, bold and innovative to arboriculture. I would like to summarise the thoughts and ideas of the contributors (Dr Alan Raynor, Reader in Biology, University of Bath, UK; Dr Olaf Ribeiro, Ribeiro, Plant Lab Inc. WA. USA; Dr Jan Cermak:, Professor of Tree Eco-physiology, Mendel University, Brno, Czech Republic; and Dr David Lonsdale, previously of the Forestry Commission and private consultant, UK) whilst adding one or two thoughts of my own. A commonly communicated concept is that a tree is suffering from a single disease or pathogen, the phrase 'the tree is suffering from fungus x' is a typical diagnosis. On the contrary it is likely that fungus x is just the most prominent example and that there are many species present and