Progression of Fistulina hepatica in oak

[David Humphries]

In which case you may very well have a point. That jogs my memory - I was told last weekend that Fistulina can cause basal burring on oak. In that sense, activation of epicormic buds at the base of the host oak could perhaps occur.

 

 

Some interesting observations and thoughts from Gerrit and Tony around Fistulina in this old thread....

 

http://arbtalk.co.uk/forum/fungi-pictures/28855-fistulina-hepatica.html

 

 

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[Kveldssanger]

Good thread! That echoes was Ted was telling me last weekend, and name-dropped Tony saying he helped put the idea 'out there'.

 

I am a little annoyed I didn't take a photo, but what got us on to the topic was a beefsteak enamating from a burr that was very pronounced, and the tiniest of tiny heartwood area exposed allowed a beefsteak to push through and fruit (on that false stem I mentioned above).

 

Do you know if Tony continued his research on beefsteak and breaking out of the heartwood to cause burring? I don't use facebook or anything so wouldn't know, sadly! Perhaps I should join to frequent such discussions...

 

The dual decay of laeti and beefsteak is another curious point, and when throwing Gymnopus fusipes into the mix it gets even more cool. Then lob in P. draydeus, Grifola, the Ganodermas (resi and australe and also lucidum maybe) and we get a real mix of stuff that can break down the heartwood of oak - albeit with white rots in there, too (and some facultative soft rots). It's a frighteningly awesome matrix of mycelial action and separating where one reign ends and another begins is very difficult, when we also take into account genetic variation / hybridisation of oaks and the sexual reproduction of basidiomycetes.

 

As usual this is probably a rambling mess but fungi just make my head spin...

Edited December 4, 2016 by Kveldssanger

[David Humphries]

Good thread! That echoes was Ted was telling me last weekend, and name-dropped Tony saying he helped put the idea 'out there'.

 

Do you know if Tony continued his research on beefsteak and breaking out of the heartwood to cause burring?

 

 

I don't know if Tony did continue the research.

 

 

 

 

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[agg221]

Thanks all for the thoughts. David - interesting link to the previous thread, although I can't get the link to Gerrit's album to work.

 

Mycology is not my strongpoint but my interpretation is as follows:

 

The question is very similar to that which Graham asked on the original thread, concerning a deliberate inoculation procedure but nobody knew the answer to that either so it appears that knowledge of the deliberate process has probably been lost.

If you are good at reading the body language of trees then you might be able to see the externally visible signs of progression.

Internal progression of F.hepatica on its own is nigh-on impossible to spot so you are taking a guess on when the colour has spread, however its method of attack is to go first inward, then outward, then produce FBs so there is a good chance that if I am seeing widespread FBs around the trunk it has progressed quite well already.

If it is not associated with anything else (most likely Laetiporus sulphureus) then the tree is unlikely to fail prematurely under most circumstances.

In the absence of any other indications, the best approach would therefore be to leave the tree for as long as possible before felling to enable colouration to spread upwards, monitoring it to establish whether any other FBs appear since this could change the strategy.

 

Cheers

 

Alec

[se7enthdevil]

could one method be to trim a few small branches up the tree to see if they are showing any signs of brown colouration? i'm guessing that if it's found it's way up that far it will have spread fairly well throughout the rest of the stem???

[agg221]

could one method be to trim a few small branches up the tree to see if they are showing any signs of brown colouration? i'm guessing that if it's found it's way up that far it will have spread fairly well throughout the rest of the stem???

 

That could be an indication, but the only brown oak I have milled had heavy lower limbs which the colour went right through but had not spread out to branches small enough to take off and assess.

 

The other issue with this particular specimen is that, being woodland grown, there are essentially no small branches before you reach the canopy so the colour would have to have travelled over 60', and I can't actually get up there to see anyway.

 

Alec