David Humphries

Oddity fruiting on heavily decayed roots equidistant between two birch trees. (possible that there may have been another species there in the past but I have no recolection of ash) This bulbose growth has its pores on the surface facing upward. Key'd out in terms of flesh and pores (no spore present) but I have not seen this before so reluctant to say for sure its Perenni.

What do you think it is?

Some nice finds during a walk around Thetford Forest this morning.

Could be an old lightning strike

Nice find Adam, likely to be carnosum but microscopy would be needed to confirm. Spore size is fairly similar to G. lucidum and a couple of other similar species that may or may not have been confirmed from UK records.

The Oudies are voracious soft rotters, and it looks heavily colonised. Branches and the top of the tree will start popping off like corks at Christmas.

That be an ex- tree, time to plan its removal.

Next to a road Jules? coming out or being managed as habitat volume? Won’t stand long without some reduction in height and branch length.

Meripilus giganteus, the giant polypore How big’s the tree and what’s the canopy look like? what are the targets?

The false puff ball, Enteridium lycoperdon.

Yes, already seen. Would very much like to capture somethying similar one day. All my fungi development is day to day development rather than short time lapse. Pretty darn cool !

Cheers Mark, yes the resinaceums were quite impressive I thought.

Some fung stuff from today at work.......

On the money with the first

Splendid !

Neoboletus luridiformis, (scarletina bolete) mycorrhizal on hornbeam.

Hi Island, hope you're well? missed this first time round. Feel free to use these if your still looking for images. The beech is one that Ted Green often shows at Windsor Great Park. He has known it to have Meripulus giganteus colonisation for many years. Couple of others of hornbeam and oak Eifels at various stages of development. This last one is probably just erosion but I think its cool.

I think it’s just frothy rain water caused by a volume of h20 bouncing and dripping off the bark after a significant down pour, no? Bit like when you hold in a full bladder whilst ya busy and then let rip and it bounces off and down what ever your pissing against ?

Not a great image Peter, we would need a closer image to help see/identify the macro features of the specimen. I wouldn’t hazard a guess based on that image.

Laetiporus sulphureus, chicken of the woods. Laetiporus is a heart wood coloniser of trunk and large branch wood of primarily oak and sweet chestnut. This looks like oak. Merripilus is primarily a root decayer found associating with a wide host range.

the suspected G. carnosum has been assessed at microscopic level and currently can't be seperated from G. lucidum due to fairly similar spore size, although some micro features lean it towards carnosum. A sample is being sent to the Jodrell laboratory at Kew for sequencing to try and determine which it is. Oddly enough there is an American Ganoderma species (G. oregonense) that also shares very similar features and apparantly there is a specimen at Kew that was sequenced to be very close to oregonense. Will update when I hear back. In the meantime, here is Ganoderma lucidum (with Gymnopus fusipes also in attendance) on hornbeam in north London yesterday.

Hello Ken, welcome to Arbtalk. Interesting topic and thanks for sharing your PSP images. Where in the word are you based? Perhaps you have different species of Armillaria than the UK. Which literature do you refer to? My understanding is that Kretschmaria deusta is predominantly a basal wood volume soft rot decayer, which extends and radiates slowly across trunks and can be found in multiple seperate colonies, with the often seen PSP's walling off the seperate territories within the wood against moisture and other fungal species. The more agressive UK species of Armillaria are actively pathogenic, killing off trees by attacking the outer vascular parts of stressed trees but can also be found in cracks and cavities within the wood volumes where I suspect they colonise in a more saprophytic nature. When looking at cross sections of trees that we've felled associated with Armillaria species (with no other known wood decay species present) I don't recall that I've seen exactly the same PSP's like the ones often to be found in trunk cross sections of trees colonised by Kretzschmaria. What we do see sometimes are the sheets of thin black Melanine plaques (made of the same substance as the coating of the rhizomorphs) which protect the mycelium of Armillaria sp on the walls of cavities, cracks within the wood volume and behind dead bark. I suspect these are protection barriers against moisture, air temperature and other fungal species and fungivores, but not in the same way that Kretzschmaria lay down their PSP barrier zones which I'd believe are possibly created chemically. The following images are of a dead horse chestnut that had these Melanine sheets/plaques behind bark and in cavities and cracks.

Fail !

On a tip off from another Arb I went to go see a better specimen of Ganoderma carnosum than the one I posted at the start of this thread. Its on a yew in a churchyard close to where I work. Going to collect some spore to get a positive micro Ident.