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Ustulina deusta aka Kretzschmaria deusta

Here hosted on Beech.
Can also be found on Lime, Maple and Oak.
Although I've only ever seen it on Beech.

Major league parasite - causing soft rot.
Quite often deep into the heartwood.

Usualy found on butress roots, though here on trunk upto 2m.

These shots show it in both the immature form ( greyish/white )
and also the mature stage ( black - can look like Tar )
which is where the spores develope (see last shot which is a cross section).

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Cool, well not for the tree

Wait till you see it on lime Monkey... squishy squishy.

We came across it on Lime, as Tom says it goes very squishy, and it smells a bit.

We were doing a crown lift and removing epicormics on a large mature Lime, using a Silky the nose of it knocked one of the butress flares and it resonated a bit, the sound gave away the fact that there was a major problem. When the boss came down I pointed it out to him and he scraped about revealing a hollow at the base, between root flares, and found a couple of small fruiting bodies and a few brittle 'sheets' which looked like burnt paper and had hyphae on them.

Apparently these sheets are a good indicator of ustulina.

The tree was subsequently probed and then felled and the extent of the decay, in the base of an otherwise apparently healthy tree, was quite amazing, especially given the small size of the fruiting bodies.

Can you remember if the decay was just in the heart wood or right across the cross section.

Any pictures perchance?

What was the probe, micro drill or increment or sommit else?

Cheers for the post Arob.

Not aware that I've seen it on Lime yet.

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Here you go MD, not sure how he tested it, (I think he may have probed to investigate extent of cavity?)

Anyway, as you asked I looked and found a few more pics (which I hadn't filed), you can see the tree hasn't been able to compartmentalise, not sure if the black line is from the tree attempting to wall out the decay, or if it's from the fungi itself, but you can see a 'wet' looking area of timber beyong this black line, this wood was not obviously soft, but appears to be the beginning of the decay process.
Sadly you can't squish the pics, but if you look carefully you might be able to see the really soft bits.

It would be interesting to know how rapidly this decay can spread within the tree.

How tall was this Lime Arob.

Do you know what past or current pruning regime it was under?





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Sorry, couldn't tell you the height, not great at eastimating heights anyway, and it was a while back, but it was fully mature. Not sure of any pruning regimes which may have been followed - can't have been much more than removing a few epicormics as it was open grown and had a very full crown.

Can't remember how far up the stem the decay ran, but we took a good few rings off before milling, but in the first pic you can see discolouration and in the second a few of the rings and quarters taken off the bottom.

Well, one short but very interesting week later, I have now seen our little friend here on Lime and Sycamore, to add to the aforementioned Beech.

Here on Sycamore

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Remembering something Marcus said last month, prompted me to look a wee bit closer at Beech in particular..........


So I thought I'd post this interesting little nugget.

These desicated root butresses are on the tension side of a Beech that has had trailers/dumpers driven over the plate, to dump leaves out in the woods

Note the regeneration (all be it small) either side between the dead roots and the healthy side root flairs.

Hmmmmmm.......

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