A visitor in my garden.

[accemn]

I would imagine it could be hard to get rid of the mycelium in the deadwood. Can you just apply fungicide on the outside of the deadwood? Mycelium has to colonize a substrate before setting fruit so it has to have been infected for a while before hand. Some wood colonizing mushrooms can take up to a year or more to set fruit.

 

[wireme]

Just trying to insert photos I mentioned.

 

[Beng]

I would imagine it could be hard to get rid of the mycelium in the deadwood. Can you just apply fungicide on the outside of the deadwood? Mycelium has to colonize a substrate before setting fruit so it has to have been infected for a while before hand. Some wood colonizing mushrooms can take up to a year or more to set fruit.

I ran home over my lunch break to take care of it. Removed 99% of it, it actually travelled up into the deadwood. Amazing thing is that this thing developed from a tiny mushroom less then the size of a penny to this 4 inch mushroom in a week or two, the deadwood was hard 2 weeks ago when I felt around the little mushroom. As Dario mentioned the wood it was in turned yellow and became soft. After removing some of the soft deadwood I painted the entire area it was in and around it with a strong dillution copper fungicide. I had been procrastinating about carving it as the current deadwood is pleasing, nature moved up the timeline.

 

[Beng]

Thinking about this a little more I have a question for those of you a bit more exp dealing with mycelium wood like this, or horticultural knowledge greater then mine. Fungicide from what I read Daconil/Copper or any other is more or less not effective against mushrooms. Would carving out the dead wood if I need to cut into the live wood to access the center rotten portion of the deadwood be a bad idea? Would that not expose the live wood to any fungus in the rotting deadwood?

The mushroom only did it's job and softened the deadwood around where the mushroom was, I see no damage to the live wood or bark. There is deadwood on the top of this tree which is rock hard. But the top deadwood and the middle deadwood connect inside the tree. If you pour liquid in the top deadwood it comes out the middle part eventually. My plan long before the mushroom came to exist was to create an open channel I can monitor better from the top deadwood area of the tree down to the middle deadwood portion of the trunk. Thinking about this more i'm thinking that might not be the best idea as it could cause the mycelium to get into other now sealed off portions of the tree. Perhaps I should only carve out what i can get to without cutting into the live wood for now?

 

[GrimLore]

There is a large difference between Mushrooms and Fungus as is with Moss and Lichen. Honest that "activity" shows good air quality and to "some" is natural patina in great conditions. If it was mine I would chat an Arborist in my region and decide what "if any actions" what was needed. I would not be quick to chop it away is all, and of course just my 2 cents.

Grimmy

 

[Beng]

There is a large difference between Mushrooms and Fungus as is with Moss and Lichen. Honest that "activity" shows good air quality and to "some" is natural patina in great conditions. If it was mine I would chat an Arborist in my region and decide what "if any actions" what was needed. I would not be quick to chop it away is all, and of course just my 2 cents.

Grimmy

Well I already removed it, but I kept it in a ziplock bag. The wood is now decaying where it was and it's a yellow color which is unusual as it's been grey for years. I'm assuming this is some kind of enzyme to break down deadwood secreted from the mushrooms. I thought I may try to grow it in a container like mentioned above. I'm in West LA and it hasn't rained here for months (apart from a tiny sprinkle yesterday) i'm told the air quality across most of the LA area is poor to bad right now. But in west LA we do get a lot of the marine layer where i'm at, so perhaps the ocean breeze each morning brings some good air with it. I had plenty of Mycorrhizae growth in my soil when repotting so far this spring.

 

[Cypress]

Thanks guys, I'll think about getting rid of it. I was going to carve the deadwood here anyway so if anything natures just playing my cards for me. Mushrooms shouldn't damage live wood. My understanding of them is that they decay deadwood and other organic decaying matter.

(Let me just say first that it is quite beautiful, and I'm glad you took a picture...)

But remove it from the tree ASAP. Especially since it is inoculating all of your soil with it's spores right now. And not the good kind, fungus growing on the wood itself is not a mycorrhizal species. it is the kind that wants to eat your tree.

I've studied forest pathology (basically an entire course about how fungus kills trees) and mycology in college. the fact that you even have a fruiting body growing from your tree is a guarantee that you already have a network of mycellium travel through the dead wood and probably into the heartwood.

Something alot of people in the general population don't particularly realize, not sure about the average bonsai enthusiast... is that the heartwood of any tree is actually dead.

Meaning most of the mass of your tree is probably dead. That's just how tree growth works. This is dependent on the age of the tree though. Younger trees are usually mostly sapwood still.

But basically what this means, is if you let that fungus do whatever it want's it will eat the insides of your tree, completely hollowing it out. Yes, living cells have ways of walling off and creating barriers against mycelium. But that only lasts so long. In college I was taught that what kills trees more than anything else is fungus. It may look like it was something else. But for example, trees in nature that eventually fall over with age and die... many times their heartwood was completely hollowed out by a fungus, leaving the tree unable to support it's own weight any longer. Even with many tree diseases associated with invasive insects like beech bark disease (beech scale insect), the insect does not kill the tree. Simply drills a hole through the cambium so the fungus can successfully invade the tree and kill it from the inside out.

Lol, please don't take that as a rant... I just find this stuff really interesting and enjoy talking about it. I love mushrooms too, and that is really an amazing sight to see. I just wouldn't want it on my bonsai tree for any longer than it took to take a picture!

 

[Cypress]

I Amazing thing is that this thing developed from a tiny mushroom less then the size of a penny to this 4 inch mushroom in a week or two, the deadwood was hard 2 weeks ago when I felt around the little mushroom.

It really is amazing, but I think an iceberg is a good metaphor for a mushroom and fungal invasion... Consider the mushroom itself the "tip" of the iceberg, and the mycelium, which is rather massive just spread out could be seen as the rest of the iceberg hidden beneath the sea.

PS. Also, didn't see there was a second page of posts when I just posted and didn't realize you already removed it, lol. Sorry. Hope you find my post informative though.

 

[Beng]

(Let me just say first that it is quite beautiful, and I'm glad you took a picture...)

But remove it from the tree ASAP. Especially since it is inoculating all of your soil with it's spores right now. And not the good kind, fungus growing on the wood itself is not a mycorrhizal species. it is the kind that wants to eat your tree.

I've studied forest pathology (basically an entire course about how fungus kills trees) and mycology in college. the fact that you even have a fruiting body growing from your tree is a guarantee that you already have a network of mycellium travel through the dead wood and probably into the heartwood.

Something alot of people in the general population don't particularly realize, not sure about the average bonsai enthusiast... is that the heartwood of any tree is actually dead.​

Thanks for the info, so now that i've removed the mushrooms what should I do to deal with the now decomposing wood inside the tree it came from? I can't access it all from the current hole. I'd have to carve into the cambium to reach it all. There are no mushrooms growing from the soil "yet" the soil conditions appear healthy. It was repotted in a totally inorganic mix "apart from a small amount of charcoal last year" there's a small amount of moss growing from time to time on the soil but nothing invasive and it's removed periodically. I see no rot other then the decomposing deadwood it was on. No other mushrooms anywhere in my garden in fact this is my first time finding a mushroom on a tree...

 

[Cypress]

There is a large difference between Mushrooms and Fungus as is with Moss and Lichen.

Moss and lichen are completely different organisms. Lichen is actually a symbiosis between a fungus and algae. basically fungus that took algae prisoner millions of years ago, fungus gets energy from photosynthesis, algae has a place to live.

Where as mushrooms are fungus. they're just one life stage in the life cycle of a fungus, basically it's reproductive organ is all.

I agree with Grimmy though, that getting in touch with an arborist could be a good idea. I'm uncertain the best way to treat that, as there is surely mycelium still in the wood to some degree. Either way, just keep a very close eye on it over the next year or two.

 

[Cypress]

Thanks for the info, so now that i've removed the mushrooms what should I do to deal with the now decomposing wood inside the tree it came from? I can't access it all from the current hole. I'd have to carve into the cambium to reach it all. There are no mushrooms growing from the soil "yet" the soil conditions appear healthy. It was repotted in a totally inorganic mix "apart from a small amount of charcoal last year" there's a small amount of moss growing from time to time on the soil but nothing invasive and it's removed periodically. I see no rot other then the decomposing deadwood it was on. No other mushrooms anywhere in my garden in fact this is my first time finding a mushroom on a tree...

Honestly I can't give you a super knowledgable answer on the treatment, just on how it kills trees hahaha. But I'll make an educated guess, I feel like if you do a few rounds of spraying fungicide into the deadwood as best you can... enough that the wood will soak it up a bit. you'll probably be fine. But try to consult with someone with a little more experience treating this sort of thing.

 

[Dav4]

Older bonsai trees are no different then older trees in the woods- their deadwood eventually rots away due to fungal organisms doing their job, which is to decompose and consume organic material. If the punky wood extends down into the trunk, it's going to keep rotting unless you remove it all. Without having the tree in front of me, I think your best bet is to either scoop out all the punky wood and carve the resulting uro so that it sheds water...or...drill a hole down from the punky wood, through the trunk and into the soil to allow drainage...yes, basically creating a hollow through the trunk. I've seen this successfully done more then a couple of times with other species of deciduous bonsai, so I think it be fine to do with your apple.

 

[Beng]

I'm thinking of using something like this http://www.amazon.com/Ideal-Industr...=1390866591&sr=8-3&keywords=flexible+drillbit hooked up to my rotary tool with a plastic brush bit at the tip like this http://www.amazon.com/Grinder-Sandi...=1390866691&sr=8-6&keywords=plastic+brush+bit or a brass/copper one. That way I can do minimal or no damage to the live wood and remove the soft deadwood. After that I can treat the remaining interior deadwood with a few fungus treatments and then if no problems re-occur within a year carve it the following year to open up the cave so that future issues like this are minimized.

 

[Poink88]

After cleaning it, hit with the fungicide then lime sulfur, then wood hardener...they shouldn't be able to regrow from that.

 

[Brian Van Fleet]

Older bonsai trees are no different then older trees in the woods- their deadwood eventually rots away due to fungal organisms doing their job, which is to decompose and consume organic material. If the punky wood extends down into the trunk, it's going to keep rotting unless you remove it all. Without having the tree in front of me, I think your best bet is to either scoop out all the punky wood and carve the resulting uro so that it sheds water...or...drill a hole down from the punky wood, through the trunk and into the soil to allow drainage...yes, basically creating a hollow through the trunk. I've seen this successfully done more then a couple of times with other species of deciduous bonsai, so I think it be fine to do with your apple.

That's pretty much what I did with this cherry, but filled it with epoxy putty.

 

[Beng]

That's pretty much what I did with this cherry, but filled it with epoxy putty.

Nice trees how's it doing since? I have of petrified and have used it before but I don't care for the glossy appearance it leaves. Although that does wear off over time. I almost used it today but I don't feel like I have enough of the deadwood out yet. The mushroom was pretty awesome wish I could have just left it there to grow.

 

[Brian Van Fleet]

It's fine, once the ants and termites were eradicated. PC Petrifier is pretty glossy, but it seems to penetrate well, and then after a couple months, the glossy shell flakes off. It will be interesting this year to see if the rot slows down any. It feels like a race with this one...grow it quick before it rots away.

A talented bonsai buddy in town is fully convinced Minwax wood hardener killed his crabapple last year. He had two, one he treated and one he did not. The treated one died.

Yours is very nice, hopefully it's not too rotted out...but if it is, it could bring on some real character.

 

[Beng]

It's fine, once the ants and termites were eradicated. PC Petrifier is pretty glossy, but it seems to penetrate well, and then after a couple months, the glossy shell flakes off. It will be interesting this year to see if the rot slows down any. It feels like a race with this one...grow it quick before it rots away.

A talented bonsai buddy in town is fully convinced Minwax wood hardener killed his crabapple last year. He had two, one he treated and one he did not. The treated one died.

Yours is very nice, hopefully it's not too rotted out...but if it is, it could bring on some real character.

Don't know about minwax as i've only used pc petrifier for dead wood but I don't see how it could kill a tree unless he got it all over all of the roots. Seems like an unlikely culprit.

 

[Neli]

He! Good you posted this...I am petrified now! I have one just like yours on a fig I dug out from the bush. I was planing to keep it. It was so pretty. I noticed it two days ago.
Going to take a picture and remove it ASAP.
One tip on Wood preservers:
Oyakata told me that his secret in preserving wood is dissolved pine gum??? into spirit= 1:10.
That is what he always uses.
Will take a picture just now, and I am repotting my tree today.

 

[Beng]

I would imagine it could be hard to get rid of the mycelium in the deadwood. Can you just apply fungicide on the outside of the deadwood? Mycelium has to colonize a substrate before setting fruit so it has to have been infected for a while before hand. Some wood colonizing mushrooms can take up to a year or more to set fruit.

I'm sure it would be.

Last night I started carving away at the rotten deadwood I tied a bag around the tree to keep the rotten wood from falling into the soil. It was most rotten from the center where the mushroom was upwards, and slightly less rotten heading downwards into the trunk. Obviously it's been decaying in there for many years. On a hunch I decided to snap off the top jin just before the apex thinking that perhaps the rot extended up that far. Beneath it was more rotten wood. I hollowed out the trunk from that upper jin all the way to where the mushroom was, there's a tunnel now and you can see the sky out of the top from the bottom. Then started hollowing downwards from where the mushroom was and it went deep, so deep that I couldn't reach it with my tweezers from the hole. I cleaned a sharp carving knife and started widdling away an arc following the trunk line finishing just between two of the main roots. It was clear that the tree had sealed off rot on the inside as I could see dark wood then the new heart wood, then the cambium then the outside bark.

After a few hours I pulled out the rotary tool and went at it full force carving out the trunk down to just between the two roots. There was just no other way to reach all the rot. I stopped just short of the bottom of the tree. Then took a sharp knife and re-scored from the cambium to the inner area where the tree had stopped the rot at, I used Kiyonal Cut paste which contains a fungicide.

Although the wood was a little soft near the soil it wasn't something I could pull out with tweezers so to keep water from pooling in the trunk I took a drill and opened a channel to the soil. Rather then take a wire brush to the inside and risk disturbing the inner bark I left a thin layer of the soft wood on all sides and did a coat of PC petrifier. I plan to do 2 more coats before I finish. There's a small bit of shari on the apex and I imagine there could be rot travelling up that portion but I wasn't sure so left that for now. All in all I think it's a big improvement on the tree and will look awesome as the hollow ages and heals over on the edges. Crossing my fingers this wasn't too much for this old man of a tree, but I think since it was the only thing i'm going to do to it this year it should fare just fine. I'll add a few pictures and videos to this post as well. Tomorrow I'll spray the whole tree with a mixture of Daconil and Honor Guard as well as do a root drench in Honor Guard as a precaution.

Here's a list of the pictures in order

Hollow from the top Jin on the back of the tree/Hollow after carving and rotary/Original deadwood cave which the mushroom was in/Back on the bench