littlebrownwren
Clump of honey mushrooms
Honey mushrooms may look harmless, but they're fatal parasites to trees with no known method of getting rid of them. By the time you see the fruiting bodies of the mushrooms above-ground under a tree, black stringy rhizomorphs have already snaked around under the bark encircling the entire trunk & root system. For this reason they're also referred to as "bootstrap fungus". A tree may fight for 20 yrs, but this fungus always wins. It spreads underground following the roots of trees & thus travels far from tree to tree. It's one of the oldest known living organisms.
From Michael Kuo of Mushroom Expert.com ~
"Pathogenic and parasitic on the wood of hardwoods (and occasionally on conifers); causing a white, pulpy rot in the wood; spreading through wood, and from tree to tree, by means of long black rhizomorphs; typically appearing in large clusters on wood in the fall after rains, but found nearly year-round in warmer climates; distributed in eastern and southeastern North America, and in California."
(Ref. www.mushroomexpert.com/armillaria_mellea.html)
100_8180
Clump of honey mushrooms
Honey mushrooms may look harmless, but they're fatal parasites to trees with no known method of getting rid of them. By the time you see the fruiting bodies of the mushrooms above-ground under a tree, black stringy rhizomorphs have already snaked around under the bark encircling the entire trunk & root system. For this reason they're also referred to as "bootstrap fungus". A tree may fight for 20 yrs, but this fungus always wins. It spreads underground following the roots of trees & thus travels far from tree to tree. It's one of the oldest known living organisms.
From Michael Kuo of Mushroom Expert.com ~
"Pathogenic and parasitic on the wood of hardwoods (and occasionally on conifers); causing a white, pulpy rot in the wood; spreading through wood, and from tree to tree, by means of long black rhizomorphs; typically appearing in large clusters on wood in the fall after rains, but found nearly year-round in warmer climates; distributed in eastern and southeastern North America, and in California."
(Ref. www.mushroomexpert.com/armillaria_mellea.html)
100_8180