Fungus

Documentation of panic fruiting of Sparassis crispa after its host - a Douglas - was felled last year. ---

Documentation of L. sulphureus brown rotting an already collapsed Castanea sativa. ---

In The Netherlands and Germany, this is becoming a common phenomenon, a beech woodland with young beeches, killed by F. fomentarius, losing their bark while still standing. The same goes for woodlands, which are dominated by birches of all ages also under attack of Piptoporus betulinus and/or Daedaleopsis confragosa. ---

Tony, I know, but I couldn't resist making fun of a guy, who seriously seems to think he is contributing to the subject and obviously doesn't know what he is talking about .

Could someone please remove the brown smut from his left eye he so desperately is trying to blow off with the curled up left side of his mouth ?

A 400+ years old Tilia, a lime tree in the eastern parts of The Netherlands, underneath which then intact crown and foliage, according to the sign, the French Sun King Louis XIV rested in 1672. ---

How about this face on a grafted beech with bark necrosis and bulbous cankers ? ---

Daniel, In the front lane of Hackfort castle in Vorden.

David, That's exactly what my wife said yesterday, when I was shooting pictures of this group of trees, so I'll upload it under that thread too .

Before the nursing of seedlings from seeds of Fagus sylvatica Atropunicea was mastered, in The Netherlands, notables, who could afford it, had so called grafted "notarisbomen" (notary trees) planted in their front gardens. After some decades some of these "red leaved" beeches started to develop bulbous necrosis caused by Nectria ditissima in and around the grafted areas and/or on the buttresses. One tree in the depicted front lane near a castle also was attacked by (rhizomorphs of) a parasitic Armillaria species at the base of the originally "green leaved" beech, at some distance of a tree a root was colonized by Xerula radicata and another tree formed a strangler root. The photo's show examples of the still closed or partially opened up bulbous necrosis, of a "free range" root far away from the trees and the strangler root, of the damage caused by Armillaria and of the superficially damaged "free range" root (lawn mower), which had been colonized by Xerula radicata. ---

And another example with compensatory root development. ---

Some documentation on two beeches with Meripilus giganteus. First a young beech (two photo's) standing beside a compacted footpath in a woodland near a castle and second a 100+ year old solitary beech in the park of a mansion with "well kept" lawns (root damage) and a golf course. Photo 1 : M. giganteus panic fruiting close to the base of the trunk from a major root of the young tree. Photo 2 : The crown of the young tree. Photo 3 : The top of the crown of the old beech from a distance. Photo 4 : An overview of the three clusters of FB's all fruiting from roots. Photo 5 : Panic fruiting from the base of a major root. Photo 6 : Panic fruiting from a major root at 2 metres from the trunk's base. Photo 7 : Oudemansiella mucida fruiting near the trunk on a dead and decorticating branch, indicating that the corresponding root has been killed by M. giganteus, which is also present on the root at about the same distance of the trunk base with some smaller FB's. ---

Tony, The man is a fantastic fairy tale teller of a romantic never ending "love story", who must not have had much experience with the tree specific specific interaction of beech and Meripilus, as he does not talk about the damage done to the superficial root system of beeches, for which they can't compensate, making the tree extremely vulnerable for windthrow and does not diagnose the adventitious rooting of beech as a survival strategy associated with Laccaria laccata, the tree "clings to" to (panic) reproduce before it falls because of total destruction of the central wood column at and underneath the forest floor level. And where does he locate the cavities inhabited by squirrels and other "wildlife" created by Meripilus ? Does he really think there will be mammals living in the sticky moist and smelly wood pulp, the mycelium of Meripilus leaves behind ?

And this is what the surface of the joint inside the acute fork of the remaining half of a bifurcated beech looks like after the "baby" half is gone. ---

Guy, You really got me confused now, first you said you are based in SE USA (North Carolina), from which country your posts and article on "frotty flux" came, and now you present yourself as being part of a field reseach team on sudden eucalypt or gum death in Australia. 1. Could well be, but as said before, without microscopical analysis nothing is certain. 2. Wouldn't it be better if microscopical analysis of the material was done by a local professional mycologist, who has the necessary equipment and chemicals, knows how to make very thin sliced sections suited for at least 1.000 times magnification, to stain or test them with the proper chemicals or reagens and knows what to look for in the preparations (septum, clamp connection, thin or thick walled hyphae, monomitic or dimitic hyphal systems, incrustration, etc.) ? 3. You cannot release spores from sterile, i.e. non-reproductive hyphae unless it's mycelium of a microfungus a-sexually producing (conidio)spores. 4. As you will have concluded after my above remarks, this type of microscopic imaging has no diagnostic value.

In Dutch it's named a Hare's paw, this Coprinus, which probably is C. lagopus.

David, 1. For a new home in a living tree, because hunting for food mostly takes place on/in (partially) dead trees inhabited by all kinds of wood and pulp consuming "live stock". 2. Correct and I don't think the tree will succeed in (again) closing the wounds over dead and (partially) decomposed wood or a cavity at this height with the windloads it has to undergo as a free standing tree. 3. Yes, I think so, because by the looks of the vertical closing structure of the wounds (shear cracks), I expect a simultaneous white rotter, such as Phellinus robustus, being active without showing itself (yet), which changes the slenderness ratio of the trunk at this height dramatically.

Documentation of the next phase of wood decay (white rot) by rhizomorphs or plaques and mycelium of Armillaria ostoyae of a still partially living oak, decomposing the tree outside in, which leaves a tree "corpse or carcass" behind, that may remain stable for several years because the heart wood stays unaffected for a long time. ---

Documentation of Fistulina hepatica fruiting on an old oak with a big FB from a by its mycelium created, on top opened up cavity at the base of a major root, which has partially died because of renewal of the pavement with tarmac of a footpath, which was a not very much compressed dirt path before, causing "smothering" of the root and depriving it of water and nutrients. The mycelium only has decomposed the heart wood without causing bark and cambium necrosis, as it normally would have at the base of a trunk with horizontally organised yearrings and radial rays. The decomposed year rings in the root are now organized in a vertical direction, which makes the root vulnerable for disintegrating and being drawn apart like an extending telescope. ---

Some examples of beeches with compensating root structures to overcome stones, brick walls and steep stream banks without losing their stability. ---

Tom, If ever you have another question, just ask. And as a mycologist, because of the rarity of the fungus, I would like to see, that the tree is treated in such a way, that it constitutes no threat to public safety and can be preserved as a mycological monument.

Testing work done on an oak with fully overgrown vertical wounds by a woodpecker, which has a membrane at the back of its beak where it is attached to his skull, which registrates the resistance at the tip of the bill while the bird is testing whether a damaged tree is suitable for creating a nesting hole. The membrane keeps the bird from becoming headaches or worse by "barking up" the wrong tree. If only we could train woodpeckers to do VTA-inspection this high up trees for us . And I wonder what they would charge for it . ---

Correction, it's the other way around. Diatrype stigma mostly fruits on the bark and falls off with the bark, K. deusta breaks through the bark and fruits on the bark and/or on the cambium or sapwood.

Some documentation (photo 1-4) of this still rare phenomenon. This young beech is standing in an open gap in a wooded bank next to a intensively manured grassland, where it is constantly "hit" by the ammonia transported by wind coming from the open field. Also notice the free standing oak in the background of the first picture, which is one of the eldest Quercus robur of The Netherlands. Photo 5/6 shows an all too common phenomenon, an old beech, which is standing at a "corner" of the cross roads of a main road and a dirt road coming from a pig farm. The nitrification of the bark of the trunk by the ammonia coming from the "pig factory" by the dominant south west wind creates a substrate for nitrogen loving lichens, such as the Xanthoria species on the bark, and triggers Nectria ditissima to cause massive bark cankers. ---

Again, great documentation ... and I don't know either. The only tree species I often see a lot of damage done to is Malus.