Anne's Daily Encounters

By dutchdelight

Fungus versus treetrunk

This looks like quiet wood life, but Wikipedia showed me that actually there's a battle going on between fungi and trees.....
The fungi that attack the tree cause white rot. With white rot, the lignin in the wood is broken down. Lignin, together with cellulose, forms the two main components of wood. When sufficient lignin (wood dust) has been broken down, the affected tree becomes susceptible to trunk breakage. However, the younger and more vital the tree is, the greater the chance that the tree will be able to counter the attack of the fungus. A layer is formed that separates the affected tissue from the healthy wood tissue and slows down the deterioration. You can regularly see the reaction to fungal attack on the outside of a tree. Tree affected by scaly bundle fungus.

The trunk then takes on a belly shape, or creates lines along the length of the trunk above some roots that grow vigorously, while parts between these lines grow little or not at all. There is no point in removing mushrooms in the hope of preventing the decline of the tree.

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