Armilaria - Central cavity decayer

[David Humphries]

I meant to say : the first and only time Oudemansiella mucida ever was found fruiting on oak.

 

Certainly appears to be a rare association as you state in your Encycloedia.

 

Haven't gone through all 24 pages on the FRDBI but the last entry is listed as Oak,

 

British Fungi - record details

 

and also here on a dead branch fallen off a Fulham Oak at Hampstead in '09

 

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[David Humphries]

Gerrit,

 

getting back to Armillaria.......

 

as this from before the ring has broken to provide a visible veil, do you think it could be ascribed as A. bulbosa/lutea ?

 

Stems appear to be bulbose.

 

appreciate your thoughts.

 

David

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[Fungus]

getting back to Armillaria.......

as this from before the ring has broken to provide a visible veil, do you think it could be ascribed as A. bulbosa/lutea ?Stems appear to be bulbose.

 

David,

No, because of the present bright yellow colour, I would expect this to become Armillaria mellea (mellea = honey) with a well developed white partial veil or annulus with a yellow margin.

[David Humphries]

David,

No, because of the present bright yellow colour, I would expect this to become Armillaria mellea (mellea = honey) with a well developed white partial veil or annulus with a yellow margin.

 

Ok, just hadn't really come across such pronounced bulbase stem base before.

 

thanks

 

D

 

 

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[Tony Croft aka hamadryad]

A 200 year old oak, under severe distress and dying back, colonised by Colybia fusipes (reason for felling) but heavy mycelium under bark, melanine plates and cavity located in butt. A shear failure was imminent and the stump even cracked right through after felling was completed.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[Pommie]

Nice pics guys.

 

David do you think it likely that the cavity in the Chestnut was already there and the fungus just exploited that?

[David Humphries]

Nice pics guys.

 

David do you think it likely that the cavity in the Chestnut was already there and the fungus just exploited that?

 

 

I think that's a possible scenario.

 

Though no remnant FB's to suggest another Fungi at work.

 

 

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[Fungus]

Though no remnant FB's to suggest another Fungi at work.

 

David,

The partner in crime of Collybia fusipes could be Armillaria lutea (= A. bulbosa), a saprotrophic Honey Fungus, mostly leading a hidden life inside cavities in trunks, which in this case only fruits (panic reproduction) after the tree has been felled and the mycelium (and rhizomorphs or plaques) is/are exposed to light (and more oxygen).

After the introduction of wood chips and thick layers of it being left behind in parks and on horse trails through woods in The Netherlands, their was such an explosion of until then unknown or rare wood decomposing species, I had to write three articles on the subject. And it was in 1999, that fruiting on a heap of wood chips with an inside temperature of 70 degrees Celsius at 30 centimetres below the surface, I found my first new species for the world : Agrocybe rivulosa.

One of the species profiting from this was Armillaria lutea, which with its rhizomorphs using the wood chips as a comfortable pathway or stepping stones to the base of trees, arriving at the base of the trunk "went under" and infected the poorly protected central wood column from underneath with rhizomorphs and/or hyphae protected by melanine plaques, and in going upwards created cavities even much bigger then the one you show in your photo.

[David Humphries]

Armillaria fruiting 'inside' the cavity of this old Beech form Burnham Beeches

 

 

 

Possibly Coprinus sp also on the lhs of second shot.

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[Tony Croft aka hamadryad]

Im seeing armilaria more and more at BB, I suspect the acidification by deep humus deposits is strssing the old beeches and giving mellea an easy time.