This can't be anything else, can it?
I love the garden that I work in here and have listened closely to the history before my involvement.
The bark of a dead but very architecturally beautiful pear tree is the source of the above image, but in the last five years or so, in a 12m radius, a mature 70ft willow & 10ft/8ft lilac have also gone - amongst other casualties.
This lot is growing freely 5m from the pear tree in a (now cleared) border. It doesn't have an apparent host like the pear tree example and is slightly different, not being so oyster-shaped, but.....I understand honey fungus, like all funghi, grow from woody material either with air or without. I think this is the same even though there's a different shape to the stools.
So, what to do? I think I need to remove every bit of old root system from previously killed trees and shrubs because otherwise the fungus will continue to thrive in an underground heaven and affect the majority of plants planted thereafter.
I've got some ideas about replacements that can tolerate honey fungus - clematis & mahonia for example, and would love more suggestions you have. But most of all, if this is honey fungus.....how would you deal with it?
Cheers, Eugene
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Get digging! Most fungi have fine mycelium (the fluffy white growth) but Honey Fungus is known for it's thick black mycelium, likened to be like the old licorice shoelaces you used to be able to get in sweet shops. You will find these structures under the bark of the dead plants as well as in the soil, including near these 'mushrooms'. Until you find these thick black mycelium it might not be honey fungus as there are several fungus species that produce similar fruiting bodies. However the fact that several susceptible species have died in that area is not encouraging....
Yes, remove woody material of any dead plant if there's even a suspicion of honey fungus. Once upon a time you might have had luck with Armillatox, but as their website www.armillatox.co.uk is at pains to point out, Armillatox is not a pesticide... if however you were to look at armillatox.com instead by mistake there is nothing anyone here can do to stop you....
Armillatox is 75% effective i'd say - its saved a few privet hedges for me, but some hedges continue to die. Unfortunatley Honey Fungus is one of those pests that if it decides its going to kill everything, it tends to crack on at doing so.
At the worst, Armillatox will slow it down - Id reccomend digging over the whole affected area and treating before any more planting is done.
I had it in the garden at my old house, a 1930s property with many mature trees and shrubs that were probably original plantings. I can't imagine how I'd ever have got every scrap of fungus out manually, as the roots of the dead plants were so integrated with everything else.
I found it was only the weaker plants that suffered. I used to lose, perhaps, one or two a year of the oldest specimens, and replaced them with healthy new planting. I think that maintaining helathy plants: watering, feeding, mulching etc., and possibly removing anything really past it's best, is going to help a lot.
some advice i heard (maybe 20 years ago now) was that we have more of a problem in the uk when it occurs as we try and deny the fungus a food source by removing infected wood/fallen trees - whereas i was told on the continent an infection/fallen trees tend to be left alone, the idea supposedly being that the fungus spreads more slowly.
this was referring to woodland management rather than gardens if i remember right.
i've diagnosed it a few times, but never had to contend with it in my work.
great stuff armillatox :)