Well a few days ago we were talking about the looong drought. It's broken here and it's like PNW or Dublin.

Sugar maple (Acer sacharrum). Say 20" DBH. 50' tall. Been in place 60+ years with no major disturbance. Some minor maybe for a driveway repaving 25 years ago. No die back, no stressed looking areas, good foliage quality and color. Good twig elongation.

In the soggy conditions thousands of small (1/8 - 3/16" high) mushrooms - perfectly formed little toadstools - have emerged from the bark on one side (at least). They come out and immediately turn upward. This happened once before and anywhere I probed the bark was intact and green beneath. I'm hesitant to trun the tree into swiss cheese probing again. The areas afftected wrap around branches where they attach to trunk, but those branches are fine.

In short I'm seeing no symptoms of death of underlying tissue: no sloughing bark, no declining or dead branches, no larger fruiting bodies. Just these little signs.

QUESTION for all you mycologists out there: are there fungi that colonize the outer, corky bark without infecting or affecting the living tissue underneath? Any enlightenment appreciated.

Reply to post by Scott Cullen, on September 10, 1999 at 07:25:38:

Scott, i run into this all the time when it's damp when I go into maples. I don't know what it's called but the'shrooms are the fruiting body for the smut (for lack of a better term) on the bark. ubiquious is an understaement. I'm posotive it is benign in healthy trees (the caveat is for Peter).

The smut is a perfect blue black dye. I have several teeshirts that used to be white. It also makes the trunks like a greased pole.

BTW I've seen similar bodies in Norways too. Don't get into Sugars and Reds too much here, but I've mentioned the alkiline clay here a few times.


jps

Reply to post by Scott Cullen, on September 10, 1999 at 07:25:38:

Bark can be an ecosystem niche by itself. Especially thick-bark trees like old large conifers, but also thin hardwoods. The shrooms are probably on the north side or a shaded side, along with lichen and/or moss. Do not worry, they are most likely epiphytic. Meaning they grow on the surface--surficial. Not to be confused with "epiphytotic" which, means, (as I mixed these two terms up once on an exam,) "a plant epidemic". That is, "epidemic" refers to animal life. Epiphytotic refers to plant life.

Reply to post by Peter Torres, on September 10, 1999 at 07:25:38:

Thanks Peter. Yes, on North side. "Epiphytic" is like some orchids and bromiliads?

Epipytotic is one of those "stuck in my mind" words from my 1 plant pathology course 25 years ago. I even remember there are three phases: lag, log and post log. Now the real question is do the epiphytes grow on the log, the post log or on log posts?