Fungus

David, 1. So would I, see Amanita rubescens and beech. 2. Not to my knowledge, but this would be hard to proof anyway. They can, however, once they've reached the end of their functioning effectively in the successive cycle of ectomycorrhizal symbionts, use their last fruiting season for producing as many FB's as possible.

I can second that .

Wow , that's some impressive short short short list of lichens depending on branches high up on trees, which only includes one genus and doesn't mention the "Old man's beards" (Usnea spp.), which just as much depend on branches of trees on which they only thrive and survive under moist clean air conditions. For your information, in The Netherlands the presence or absence of certain species of lichens is used as a bio-indicator for air pollution and more specific - together with certain species of (ectomycorrhizal) macrofungi - for the level of acidification an/or nitrification of the environment. How about contributing to your own thread by providing us ignorants with an entirely valid complete list of all the lichens and mosses (bryophytes : 12.000 species worldwide) living high up on branches of trees then and with the outcomes of your own research on the subject of organisms depending on the canopies of trees instead of "google shopping" for information you fail to understand or are unable of interpreting correctly !? And if you can tell me, which 3 species of lichens and 2 species of mosses live on this thin "airborne" branch of Sambucus nigra, you're my champ forever ! ---

Gollum, Did you try talking to him/her and ask him/her how he/she feels and what he/she thinks the problem is, like a sister of our queen teaches us to do ?

I think it has more to do with F. hepatica being a super tree species specialist, which only can thrive on vinegar acid rich trees such as Quercus robur and Castanea sativa, while the others you mention - with the exception of I. dryadeus - have a much broader range of hosts, i.e. are generalists with their own effective non-species specific strategies or acid tolerant structures, i.e. rhizomorphs and/or melanine plates, to protect their hyphae with.

1. Boletus radicans. 2. Collybia dryophila. 3/4. To young to identify, could turn out to be a Psathyrella species.

Not much body language left after a storm almost completely blew off the crown of this oak, brown rotted at great height by Laetiporus sulphureus. Funny to see how in the cavity Mycena galericulata, which mostly fruits on stumps and wood laying on the forest floor, carries on decomposing the remaining wood with polyaromatic hydrocarbons. ---

No, I don't know which one does what to the other, I'm just noticing they don't colonize the same oaks at this location, a phenomenon, that I did see elswhere, as is shown in the following photo of a veteran oak with a necrosis of F. hepatica to the right of the trunk base and large patches of deformed and shedded bark caused by (rhizomorphs of) Armillaria ostoyae in front. ---

Nice pic's , especially of the guttating B. adusta, a rare phenomenon for this annual bracket fungus producing polyaromatic hydrocarbons.

Photo 1. An update on a open wound inside a big bark and cambium necrosis on an old oak, out of which last year F. hepatica (maybe) was fruiting for the last time (?). Photo 2. Fruiting for the first time of F. hepatica from the connection of the base of a major root to the trunk base of an oak with minimal necrosis visible. Photo 3/4. An old oak with two big necrosis bucklings at one half to one metre height of the trunk, from one of which this year F. hepatica is fruiting for the first time. Photo 5. Final phase of bark and cambium necrosis with exposure of dead wood at the base of an oak. Photo 6. Saw cut of the trunk base with traces of activity (pocket rot) of the mycelium of F. hepatica at the level of the outside bark and cambium necrosis on an oak. All photo's are from the same Dutch location, the park in front and to the side of the estate of Groeneveld castle (Baarn) and the oaks are standing in the same lane as the row of oaks in the first photo in different phases of infection with Armillaria ostoyae. When an oak is colonized by F. hepatica, Armillaria ostoyae is absent, when Armillaria is present, F. hepatica fails. ---

Which implicates, that there must be lots of insects and larvae present to forage, which in their turn are "attracted" to the branches (and the FB's of the fungi), because of the white and soft rotters decomposing the bark and wood, etc.

For what it's worth, from a fungal point of view, I can provide you with a long list of species of macrofungi, which start their recycling and pioneer bark and wood decaying activities long before the branches fall off, i.e. there's a complete, partialy tree species specific ecosystem with its own successive order up there, which continues its work once the branches are on the forest floor, which often triggers them to fruit for the first time. To give some examples of indigenous Dutch species : - Oudemansiella mucida, Marasmiellus species, Hohenbuehelia species, Crepidotus species and other Agaricales, - Vuilleminia comedens, Stereum species, Peniophora species, Steccherinum species, Hymenochaete species, Plicaturopsis crispa, Auriculariopsis ampla and lots of other Corticiaceae, - Inonotus species, Phellinus species, Polyporus species and other Polyporaceae, - Tremella species, Exidia species, Myxarium species, Hirneola auricula-judae, Femsjonia pezizaeformis and other Tremellales - Nidulariales (Gasteromycetes), - Chlorociboria species, Encoelia species, Lachnellula species, Ascotremella faginea, Hypocreopsis lichenoides, Nectria species, Diatrype species, Diatrypella species, Hypoxylon species, Rosellinia species, Peroneutypa heteracantha, Daldinia concentrica and other ascomycetes.

Which would be quite detrimental to the tree if it has formed stem-girdling or root-bridging roots itself providing the base of the trunk with a water reservoir collecting rain water running down from the trunk, as is often seen with beeches (photo's 1-2) and Acer, which are standing next to a compacted dirt path or paved road and have lost or cannot develop water collecting roots at that side (anymore). And how and to which tree's benefit would you "solve" the problem at the side of a compacted dirt path in the third picture ? Kill the Tilia by "pruning" his main root, because the oak has the older "birth rights" ? ---

Lorry, So you're drinking Dutch coffee then . In The Netherlands we very often use a coffee machine called Senseo, which was co-invented by Philips and Douwe Egberts, using prefabricated pads to make coffee with a foamy head on top. My favorite is Mocca . While visiting a German exhibition on fungi (what else ), I read a story on the British mainly drinking coffee until 1893, when over 93 % of all coffee plants in Ceylon were killed by the coffee leaf rust Hemileia vastarix and Ceylon replanted all fields with tea, which from that moment on - besides water, milk and sugar - became the most imported and important ingredient of hot drinks consumed by the British. Only after coffee mainly came from new and parasite free plantations in Brasil, they also started drinking coffee again. Today the coffee leaf rust and the coffee berry disease still is a big problem causing a lot of financial damage to coffee producing countries all over the world.

1. Do you know this in vitro research on the effects of ectomycorrhizal fungi on tree roots and the soil food web ? 2. Is there any cooperation or sharing of knowledge and documentation between Australia and New Zealand ? Do you f.i. consult Clive Shirley's New Zealand Forest Fungi website ?

Oak devouring half of a sign while pulling it inside.

As I said before, not being a native speaker, writer and reader in/of the English language, nor being familiar with Australian or British humour, I sometimes miss the point in statements, which can be interpretated in more then one way . Besides, Dutch have quite a different sense of humour, which you probably would not understand if you were confronted with it . That being said, I have a serious question. Does the holistic approach of your plant, tree and soil health care company imply and integrate the dynamics of tree species specific ecosystems - parasitical, saprotrophic and endo- or ectomycorrhizal micro- and macrofungi included - and their tree species specific soil food webs and the life cycles of indigenous trees in its work on and management of (urban) trees and forests ?

Some documentation from The Netherlands on how pollarding of old willows is done. Depending on what the shoots of these willows are used for, the schedule is set on every two to three years cutting all shoots with a hand saw. ---

Ahh, you mean Phellinus cavicola, the lover of cavities .

Tony, What is P. clavicola ? If both photo's show the same species, I would think this might be a partially resupinate Heterobasidion annosum.

Another example of G. lipsiense as a facultative parasite can be seen in the pictures of the dead remains of this Tilia, which once was standing on a no longer used old church yard in full sight of the window of a class of my old primary school, the tree in which' crown sometimes a Golden Oriolus was singing. Some 15 years ago it fell because of a massive decay caused by K. deusta and G. lipsiense, of which one perennial bracket (last photo) still is forming new tube layers, while all other brackets (photo 2/3) have stopped reproducing. Note how the white and soft rotted wood now has become a substrate for an oak seedling and some seedlings of plants, including Winter Purslane. ---

This beech I've known (and liked) for the entire period of me being a primary school kid. Yesterday I visited my old town for the third time in the past three years on the 24th and/or 25th of August and saw from a distance the poor condition the partially defoliated crown was in. Closer by it turned out to be surrounded by four clusters of FB's of Meripilus giganteus, which just had started fruiting (for the first time ever ?). The last picture shows the horizontal wavery shell buckling of the bark at the base of the trunk, caused by the changes in slenderness ratio and the sideways movement of the tree and/or the white rot of the central wood column compressing the base with the weigth of the trunk and the crown. ---

1. Not yet opened up Boletus species : tree(s) ? 2. Russula species : tree(s) ? 3/4. Laccaria amethystina. 5. Gymnopilus junonius. 6/7. Laccaria laccata s.l. (+ Rickenella fibula ?) 8/9/10. Collybia confluens. 11/12. Ramaria stricta. 13/14. Peziza michelii or Otidea species. 15/16. Russula species : tree(s) ? 17/18. Stereum species (?) with dried up plasmodium of Badhamia utricularis. 19/20/21. Inonotus drydaeus/Fistulina hepatica + FB's Collybia fusipes. 22/23/24/25. Ganoderma lucidum. 26/27. Chlorociboria aeruginascens s.l. 28. ??? with Hypomyces rosellus. 29/30/31. Oligoporus guttulatus ?

1. Feel or know for a fact and from own practice within your Queensland based holistic, 100 % organic tree, plant and soil health care company ? 2. If you don't know what you're looking for, that's correct. 3. I tried to explain the use of chemical reagens and a microscope - instead of a magnifying glass, treeseer used before to search for hyphae inside rhizomorphs of Armillaria with - to identify and asess hyphae, spores and other characteristic structures of anamorphs or teleomorphs of certain species of macrofungi before to Cassian and Guy Meilleur, while he was visiting Australia, but his reply was, that instead of consulting a professional mycologist, "it would also be better to have world peace, and a chicken in every pot", and after I withdrew from the topic "We've excised Gerrit's constructive advice, and will follow it ", and then left Australia, so I've given up trying.

1. By using a microscope capable of determining whether the hyphae behind the melanine layer belong to an Armillaria species or that the black layer is of another (fungal : mostly ascomycete) origin. 2. No, as opposed to biotrophic parasitic, meaning the parasite dies once the host is killed, necrotrophic or facultative parasitic means the mycelium of the fungus lives on once the host/tree is dead and keeps contributing to the decomposition of the substrate/wood. And yes, almost all pathogens consume dead tissue too and the mycelia of macrofungi do it for the greater part to provide themselves with the sugar polymere cellulose to form chitin (another cellulose based but modified sugar polymere) rich annual or perennial FB's with. 3. It goes without saying, that everything is possibe, so I stick to concentrating on the information or "facts" provided and data based analysing and pointing in certain directions without being able to diagnose in situ or in vitro myself, because I thought that's what this site is for.