I've got a real mystery here. About 10 years ago I had an extension added to
my asphalt driveway. The last couple of years I noticed that it was starting
to heaving at the seam between the new and old portions. Since there's a
mature ponderosa pine about 10 feet away I though OK the pine sent a root
that's picking up water leaking into the seam.

So I chopped up the asphalt and dug down. What I found blew me away. It was
a large twisted network of lumpy roots, up to 4 inches in diameter, twisting
back and forth on themselves, amounting to maybe 30 pounds of wood in total.
But the really weird part is that there was no connection to the pine or any
other plant outside the driveway. There was a number of smaller branches
going off into the soil in various directions but none of them connect to
anything. They all just die out in the soil.

So here I have a rapidly growing chunk of root apparently not connected to a
tree. Is that possible?

Dave Gower schreef
So here I have a rapidly growing chunk of root apparently not connected to
a tree. Is that possible?

***
Truth is stranger than fiction, but there must be a tree somewhere.
At some point a book was published on identifying mystery roots that are
found growing into things and causing problems.
PvR

How do u know its growing? It might just be the remains of a tree that
was there and removed ages ago...do u know the history of the site?
and if u do and have a pic, let me know (I love this stuff). Anyway,
my experience with trees is (Im thinking of your heaving concrete),
consequences from distrubance can happen decades down the track (you
know grading, trenching that kind of thing), and, how reactive is your
soil? sometimes changes in condtions/climate cause it with reactive
clays, or if u remove a tree, on reactive clays, even some distance
away, will shrink and crack and heave because the very source of
moisture removal has been removed. * shrug my 2 bobs worth anyway lol
Just had an after thought! have u got any trees nere capable of self
probagation by stolon/rhyzome, layering etc???? Ive seen weird things
with that stuff too lol