Trunk decay

I came across something interesting last week while removing a small cypress tree in the Madison Valley of Seattle. The tree had a lot of recent branch and foliage die-back and generally was not looking robust.
When I made the final cut low on the trunk I noticed a fair amount of decay (notice the spongy looking parts of the trunk in the photo on the left). What I found interesting were the narrow bands of white fungal mycelium that were visible in the bark. They seemed to be only in the areas directly adjacent to the sections of rot further in the trunk. Perhaps the fungus decaying the wood is also visible in the otherwise healthy looking outer bark?
I think a very close look at the bark layers (without removing the tree or even damaging the trunk) would have indicated the internal decay. Something I made a note of in case I come across a similar looking cypress tree in the future.
To know if the two observations are actually correlated one would have to identify the fungal species, likely quite difficult since it wasn’t fruiting.

This tree had limited areas of healthy xylem and cambium, some of which can be seen in the upper left side of the trunk.

This tree had limited areas of healthy xylem and cambium, some of which can be seen in the upper left side of the trunk.


Note the bands of mycelium in the outer layers of bark.

Note the bands of mycelium in the outer layers of bark.

This entry was posted in Curiosities, Fungi. Bookmark the permalink.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *