<p>Duncan Slater Myerscough College PRESTON PR3 0RY [Date]</p><p>[Recipient Name] Editor in Chief Trees – Structure and Function [Street Address] [City, ST ZIP Code]</p><p>Dear [Recipient Name]</p><p>Your Ref.: Ms. No. TREES-D-13-00026R1</p><p>Determining the mechanical properties of hazel forks by testing their component parts Trees - Structure and Function</p><p>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. </p><p>This letter describes the actions we have taken to address the reviewers’ comments.</p><p>Comments from the Communicating Editor:</p><p>The paper is now acceptable for publication. Please consider the simplification of equations 1 & 2 as suggested by referee 2.</p><p>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.</p><p>Comments from Reviewer #1:</p><p>The points I made in my previous assessment of this article were correctly taken into account in this resubmitted version.</p><p>We would like to thank this reviewer for their previous suggestions and amendments – they were most helpful in improving the submitted draft paper.</p><p>Comments from Reviewer #2:</p><p>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]</p><p>[Date]</p><p>Page 2 basis, the estimation of the contribution of the different parts of the fork apex surface in the bending strength is rigorously performed.</p><p>Minor comments: </p><p>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.</p><p>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.</p><p>We hope our amendments satisfy your editorial team and reviewers, and we have resubmitted our amended manuscript and figures to your journal.</p><p>Yours sincerely,</p><p>Duncan Slater</p><p>Lecturer in Arboriculture</p><p>Myerscough College</p>