Fungus

Rob, Only if you count in fungus on fungus too. The green stuff on the second photo is not a mould, but the Trichoderma anamorph of a Hypocrea species, of which the mycelium "recycles" the dead tube layers of the Ganoderma. Another example is Hypocrea pulvinata on the tube layers of old brackets of Piptoporus betulinus.

Rob, If with "stem girdling roots", strangulating roots shutting off the transport of water and nutrients in a tree by itselves (f.i. Ulmus) or by a neighbouring tree (photo 2) are meant, the answer is yes. And if the tree roots creating a water basin (first picture) for its own benefit is meant, the answer is no.

Tony, No, it was identified as Psilopileusarboretus bifurcatus, in English called the double stemmed Liberty Cap tree .

Janey, Food being caterpillars, you mean the great and blue tits, not the woodpeckers and treecreepers, I presume ?

It highly depends on the age and condition of the beech. For general information, see : Nectria coccinea - Bugwoodwiki

David, This was in the garden of one of my former German neighbours .

Correct, in Dutch it's called St. John's leaves, after St. John's nameday, about the date of reappearing of the leaves. Once the second flush of leaves appears, in The Netherlands often an infection of the young leaves with the anamorph of the aok mildew Microsphaera hypericacearum develops, which diminishes the fotosynthesis in the leaves by more then 30 %, resulting in further reduction of the energy reserves of the oak, which already were not fully produced and stored, because the first appearing leaves were completely lost.

Can anyone tell me what kind of unknown, maybe even new (?) species of double trunked fungustree this is ?

Matt, Polyporus species do not attack the root system of trees. To me this looks like a phenomenon not associated with fungal activity, but occuring when varying groundwater levels force a beech to "push" itself up and superficially grow far out to avoid contact of the base of the trunk with groundwater. Beeches are trees with a superficial root system avoiding groundwater contact and almost totally depending on rainwater for their water supply, so that is why the main roots grow outward up to or beyond the outer crown projection collecting the water dripping down from the leaves of the outer crown branches and the fine roots develop just underneath the forest floor to uptake rainwater immediately after falling on its surface. Beech leaves then, are shaped in such a way, that they are capable of holding back rainwater for a while, which drips down slowly from the tips. When the roots on one side of a beech (or Acer) can not reach water anymore, because the surface of an alongside path has hardend so much no rain gets through, a beech on that side sideways develops "strangulating" roots crossing the other roots forming water basins close to the base to collect rainwater running down from the trunk (first photo). The second photo shows the base of a beech around which an old spruce has developed two roots reaching out over 6 metres to the base of the beech and surrounding it to collect the rainwater coming down from the trunk of the beech.

David, It is assumed to be sterile "air" mycelium growing out to uptake moist from the air, which is delivered to the inside mycelium to help it fruiting under dry circumstances and/or when the decomposed wood contains (too) little water.

(Hama) Dryad's Saddle (Polyporus squamosus).

1. and 2. 3. Ganoderma lipsiense 4. Black leakage from small bark wounds, caused by the mycelium of Ustulina deusta invading and killing the cambium, a symptom of the final stage of soft rotting the heartwood before the fruiting from underneath the bark of the beech starts and the bark is falling off. Please upload the pictures directly next time to Ecology : Keizer's Fungi Q & A and one species at the time.

Or Operophtera brumata ?

David, : a "fox tail" coloured ozonium of the type associated with Coprinus domesticus, C. radians and C. xanthothrix.

Ben, I did understand what you ment, I offered an extra explanation on the even today impressive adaptability to pollution of lichens coming from the far more extreme living conditions in the Devonium period.

David, No, it originally was diagnosed as a fungus, but recent research has identified it as a lichen, which is not a fungus or an algae, but a fungus and an algae living in symbiosis.

Tony, There is also a chance, this a type of ash canker caused by Nectria galligena, see : http://bio.kuleuven.be/sys/iawa/PDF/IAWA%20J%2021-25/25%20(2)%202004/25(2)%20165-174.pdf. And has the death of Fraxinus caused by the anamorf Chalara fraxinea of Hymenoscyphus pseudoalbidus already reached your country ? Coming from Germany, since 2010 it has invaded the northeastern parts of The Netherlands with lots of young and some old ashes dying as a consequence. On Rügen (Germany), in 2009 it has killed hundreds of old ashes.

Tom, The decomposition strategies of the same species of fungi vary with the tree species, that is to say, Phellinus robustus is a fast white rotter and extremely dangerous on Quercus rubra (see photo) and a slow white rotter of Q. robur, with which the annualy thin layers on the perennial brackets producing mycelium "grows old" together and that is why you can drive nails into wood with a bracket "harvested" from Q. robur. And because the mycelium of biotrophic parasites, like Phellinus species, can not switch to a saprotrophic phase once the tree is dead and falls, it does not invest in a fast decomposition of the wood, as it wants to also be active in the cambium for as long as possible to survive itself. So the better the quality of the heartwood of a tree species, the less damage is done on the short run.

Ben, They were the first organisms originating from a symbiosis of cyanobacteria and microfungi, which came from the sea and went on land in the Devonium period, 400 million years ago, where they lived and evolved under extreme climate and atmospheric conditions. The largest thalli ever produced by a Prototaxites species were up to 8 metres high and 1,25 metres in diameter and looked like a multiple branched Mexican cactus. If you're ever in the German Eifel region, visit the Devonium Waxweiler museum to see fossiles of Prototaxites (and many other plants and animals from that period), which were found in a quarry just outside the village of Waxweiler.

on beech with soil contact : enormous energy (cellulose) source for the mycelium, huge amounts of annual fruiting, which P. squamosus often does twice a year from the same substrate, once in spring and once in autumn.

David, Goedemorgen too, although it is 10:33 AM (summertime), i.e. 2 hours later over here. Without slice difficult to say. A wild guess would be, it is a sterile perennial, poorly developed bracket of Ganoderma lipsiense, of which the mycelium has stopped fruiting after the beech closed it in and shut the mycelium off of its food or energy supply.

Tom, Could well be Phellinus robustus, which is a biotrophic parasite, causing mostly relatively slow developing white rot of the heartwood of the tree, but without information on the colour of the spores and checking microscopical characteristics, from a photo alone 100 % certain identification is not possible.

David, "Brackets at first whitish, then yellowish to pinkish gray, eventually gray brown. Tubes in the same colours. Flesh white, in old specimen gray brown. Tough when dry." (Gerhardt, 2006).

Matt, Will the restored grasslands (also) be monitered on the (re)occurence of calcareous grassland macrofungi, such as Hygrocybe, Dermoloma, Entoloma, Clavulinopsis, Trichoglossum, Geoglossum and Thuemenidium species ?

Bart, I would not be surprised if this also was Aurantioporus fissilis, just like the perennial fungus Tony recently showed.