Black Fungus Causing Tree Sickness on Beech

[adamelder]

Can anyone help with what this is? It's spreading through a stand of mature beech trees in a friend's woodland.

 

The bark falls off and the tree becomes sick, eventually dying.

[Paul Melarange]

It appears to be consistent with the fungus Biscogniauxia nummularia. It colonises dead/dysfunctional parts of beech trees.

 

I can see that there are a lot a dead patches of bark in the pictures and the crown looks quite thin. I suspect something has occurred that has caused the trees to go into decline such as root damage, water logging, sudden exposure to light.

 

The B.nummularia is likely to be an effect of the poor physiological condition rather than the cause. However in southern Italy it is believed to be a pathogen, but I'm dubious about it.

[daltontrees]

I'd go along with Paul on this, it accompanies tree decline rahter than causes it. The pictures suggest the blacknes is following long vertical splits in the bark. Whatever caused those could be the true problem.

 

HAve the trees had a lot of ivy removed off them or been exposed to sun by other trees nearby being removed recently?

[adamelder]

I'd go along with Paul on this, it accompanies tree decline rahter than causes it. The pictures suggest the blacknes is following long vertical splits in the bark. Whatever caused those could be the true problem.

 

HAve the trees had a lot of ivy removed off them or been exposed to sun by other trees nearby being removed recently?

 

Thanks gents for the replies. The trees are quite exposed to southerly wind and also do get a lot of sun. There have been a couple of trees to the south of the affected beeches which came down due to age and wind in the last couple of years.

 

The beech have never had ivy covering.

 

I did wonder if the core problem might be caused by an increase in the amount of sun the beech were experiencing from the loss of sheltering neighbours.