the body language of Decay, The Delights of D

[Tony Croft aka hamadryad]

So, back to Hispidus and ash.....

 

In my opinion a very important retrencher and recycler for LIVING ash trees, what at first appears to be a parasite and highly detrimental to the tree is in fact an integral part of the trees life cycle. Find me a mature ash WITHOUT hispidus and i will show you a rare tree!

 

these images need little verbal communication, the tree has lived most of its life with inonotus hispidus, has maintained two heavy low limbs despite the heart rot via the colonisation. Observe re iterative growth and healthy occlusions (with undifferentiated tissues within wound wood formations)

 

Note the stem tapers, indicating younger regrowth at what where stub ends, natural pollarding via Inonotus hispidus.

 

 

 

 

 

Edited November 25, 2010 by Tony Croft aka hamadryad

[Tony Croft aka hamadryad]

Copied from "fomes flying high" due to this being of high relevence to this thread also.

 

This threads made me come up with this, hope its useful to somone!

 

If our fruit bodies presented as in the blue dots we could safely assume the decay is confined to the now dysfunctional ripe/heartwood, and that the trees trunk/stem although now discontinuos is growing just fine.

 

However, if they presented as in the yellow spots we would have to look at wether it was a dysfunctional column connected to a dead/dying root or wether it was due to the tree as a whole being colonised.

 

If they track as in the yellow it is usualy a sign that a root has died and the decay may well spread (as with F. fomentarius) right up to high canopy limbs connected and associated with the now dead/dying root. If the tree has plenty of vitality the rot may well in most cases be confined within this "dysfunctional" chamber, weakened by drought or other stresses the rot may penetrate bariers and spread depending on the tree genus and fungal parasite.

 

* additional- the blue dots represent where fruitbodies would be if living off the ripe/heartwood, as these discontinuations are the only accses to air for fruiting.

[Matthew Arnold]

I've got some more nice pics of Sycamore and its compartmentalisation of fungi. The first pic is of where the main fruiting body in this case being Dryads Saddle an intense white rotter entered the tree. It was a multi stemmed coppice stool that had 3 big "hazard" beams removed due to the stool starting to open up. The next 4 pics are showing the rot just making its way into the remaining stems. The fifth pic is of a very small Bleeding Canker lesion that wasnt found until the day of removal. Picture 6 shows the size of the coppice stool and clearly shows where the rot was entering the heartwood. The next three pictures are of rot on the logs that had come from about 15-18 ft up in the tree. Feel free to use and annotate.

[RobArb]

and its snowing!

[Matthew Arnold]

We didnt have much snow over night just enough to make the grass white but not enough to cover it.

[Bart]

Hope you dont mind seems to fit in with a previous post.

 

But back to the relationship between hispidus and the ash, as with many fungal host relationships that are predominantly heart rotting this results in limb loss for the most part, natural pruning, woundwood ribs and tissues are highly adaptive forming roots or shoots at will providing the climate is right, light or damp, a recently opened canopy or an increasingly damp rot pocket full of broken down debris ripe for the advantigous roots to form.

[Tony Croft aka hamadryad]

The images above show the power of woundwood, and a lovely example of combined root and heartrot, probaly via pholiota squrossa in the butt and hispidus in the stem, though polyporus squamosus is also a candidate, as indeed could be auricularia mesenterica, but suspect its hispidus due to the obvious necroses running down the stem and the reiterative growth at its lowest region, typical of hispidus retrenchment

[Tony Croft aka hamadryad]

Today i was up at one of my favourite old growth beechwoods, frishden beeches:thumbup1: where i am constantly looking at the relationships beech have with various fungi. Firstly the images here, what I believe are the very unique and extremely verbal communications of Auricularia mesenterica, increasingly i find pholiota aurivella in attendence, but as I am going to be starting a paper on these soon I am certain i will find that the pressence of P. aurivella is not significant, at least not in the language.

 

 

 

 

 

[Tony Croft aka hamadryad]

And this set of images are (in my opinion and unproven) symptoms of a fungi considered rare or at least infrequent, Inonotus cuticularis. This fungis rot characteristics are classified as white rot and i am certain these prominent and multiple buckles are due to a preferential lignin degradation before cellulose, leaving the tree far less stiff that is usualy the case. I. cuticularis is the fungi responsible (IME) for the most extreme and exagerated forms of what Claus Mattheck would call "the wrinkly sock":biggrin:

 

 

 

[David Humphries]

Have you any shots of cuticularis fruiting around the sites of wrinkly socks?

 

Not disagreeing, I think you're probably spot on with your observations, makes big sense.

 

Though personally I think I've only ever come across fruiting bodies at wounds, & not been aware of wrinkles.. Probably me just not seeing it at the time.

 

Will keep a look out for tell tale signs next time.

 

 

.