Fungus Defeats Old Oak, Olmsted Park, Boston

[urbpan]

While walking the dogs yesterday, we came across this huge oak, toppled over at the bank of Ward's Pond in Olmsted Park in Boston.

(5 pictures behind cut)





You can see a thick mat of fungal mycelium in the now-exposed roots.



cottonmanifesto says she remembers that Hen-of-the-woods (Grifola frondosa)used to grow from the base of this tree.

We had a windstorm over the weekend, but gusts of only 30 miles an hour, not tree-toppling weather, at least, not without help from fungi.



This shows the gap in the tree-line that's been created. I wonder what changes this deadfall will produce.

The wind also knocked down lots of little dead branches covered with wood ear (Auricularia auricularis). It was growing so thick that you could eat it like corn on the cob.



(but I didn't, really.)

Cross posted to ecology, found_objects, mycology, wildfoods

Comments

[shellizzle.livejournal.com]

I added you as a friend! I loooooooove reading stuff like this.

[rwblackbird.livejournal.com]

tasty!