Kay Easton wrote:
In article , PK
writes
norfolk dumplin wrote:
Ihave a bad dose of honey fungus all around an old tree stump so far
nothing seems to kill it the toadstools are in a large solid mass,
would burning them control the spread?, we are really running out of
ideas,the stump is about four foot high and three foot
circumference, we have been using it as a bird table since it was
cut down two years ago it was a twenty foot plus tree, hope someone
can come up with a solution, apart from hiring a tree specialist to
remove it thanks.

Honey fungus spreads by underground rhizomorphs (bootlaces). It
finds a tree, enters via the collar at gound/soil juction, kills the
tree then uses the dead wood as a sugar (food) source while it
forages on via more bootlaces. Or it finds a lump of dead tree and
uses it in the same way.

It's one of our commonest fungi. How come there are still trees in the
UK? ;-


It's endemic in woodalnd and a natural part of the life/death cycle.

Problem is, by definition, in gardens we are trying to bend nature to our
will and whim not allow it to follow it's natural path. If we want to put in
gardens plants which nature has selected out of regions with endemic honey
fungus or varieties which we hace selected for their pretty form but ignored
other aspects such as HF susecptibility, then we need to take
special/extraordianry measures to stop nature having it all its own way. A
bit like removing suckers from roses, bending nature to our will not letting
the plant revert.

pk