Recipient Name s1

Duncan Slater Myerscough College PRESTON PR3 0RY [Date]

[Recipient Name] Editor in Chief Trees – Structure and Function [Street Address] [City, ST ZIP Code]

Dear [Recipient Name]

Your Ref.: Ms. No. TREES-D-13-00026R1

Determining the mechanical properties of hazel forks by testing their component parts Trees - Structure and Function

We would like to thank you and your reviewers for the feedback provided upon our draft paper. We have made a minor amendment to take into account the reviewers’ comments.

This letter describes the actions we have taken to address the reviewers’ comments.

Comments from the Communicating Editor:

The paper is now acceptable for publication. Please consider the simplification of equations 1 & 2 as suggested by referee 2.

We have amended both equations, associated text, and the associated figure (Figure 3) to simplify the equation as referee 2 has suggested. This does provide a simpler way to present our calculations to others.

Comments from Reviewer #1:

The points I made in my previous assessment of this article were correctly taken into account in this resubmitted version.

We would like to thank this reviewer for their previous suggestions and amendments – they were most helpful in improving the submitted draft paper.

Comments from Reviewer #2:

The new version of the paper of Slater and Ennos is now more convincing and deserves publication in “Trees – Structure and Function”. The idea which consists in removing different tissues of the fork is original and, on this [Recipient Name]

[Date]

basis, the estimation of the contribution of the different parts of the fork apex surface in the bending strength is rigorously performed.

Minor comments:

In equations (1) and (2), the use of angle ‘Theta_1’ is not necessary. Indeed, the bending moment ‘M_peak’ [Equation (1)] can be simply expressed from the angle ‘Theta_2’ (Fig. 3) such as : M_peak = F_peak b sin(Theta_2) since Theta_1 = 180 – Theta_2 and hence, sin (Theta_1) = sin(180-Theta_2) = sin(Theta_2). This leads to an analogous simplification of Eq.(2) in which only ‘Theta_2’ needs to be expressed.

We have amended both equations, associated text, and the associated figure (Figure 3) to simplify the equation as referee 2 has suggested. As there is only one angle in Figure 3 now, we have simply used the symbol ‘Theta’, rather than ‘Theta_2’, as there is not another associated angle which we need to differentiate it from. This does indeed improve our presentation and simplify both equations. We thank this reviewer for their comments.

We hope our amendments satisfy your editorial team and reviewers, and we have resubmitted our amended manuscript and figures to your journal.

Yours sincerely,

Duncan Slater

Lecturer in Arboriculture

Myerscough College