In article ,
Jon Nicoll wrote:
I'm trying to determine why our viburnam has died, in somewhat
spectacular fashion

A bracket fungus - my books are a bit inaccessible at present, but something
like dryad's saddle - there are quite a lot, however, and identifying fungi
precisely is seriously tricky. Many of them (probably that one) do not kill
the host and, if it had been a species that is adapted to the loss of its
heartwood(like oak), it would still be fine (but hollowed out, stag-headed
etc.) A large horse chestnut just across the road had been felled because
of a similar issue (but different cause). Suckering trees will respond by
forming a group (or even thicket) of shoots, provided the roots are alive.

The symptoms are wildly unlike either honey fungus or phytophthora, and the
Web and media do us no service by banging on about those. They are just two
examples of many thousands of parasitic fungi and microorganisms that are
common in the UK.


Regards,
Nick Maclaren.