Identification please

[Ladywell]

Can someone please identify this for me -it is growing on a now dead Prunus sp tree in my mother in law's garden. It seems to be like a small (or young) bracket - very hard to the touch.

Did this kill the tree or is it growing on the tree because it is dead?

Thanks in advance

[Chris Yeates]

hi

it's not easy working from those photo's I'm afraid, but a possible candidate is Chondrostereum purpureum, silver-leaf fungus; if that is the case (and it does often occur on Prunus it could have been actively attacking the tree)

see: Chondrostereum purpureum - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

if you could send large images it would confirm or refute that tentative id.

best wishes

Chris

[Ladywell]

Sorry my photos are not good - just spoken to my sister in law and she tells me that there was a Rowan nearby a few years ago with the same fungus - so I guess that explains what happened. Thankyou for your help. One more question - if the spores are airborne - how does something so woody produce spores?

[fairplay]

I agree with Chris that this is most likely to be C.purpureum.

With all this dry weather, your fungus has completely dried up, but when young, will be more flexible and leathery and have an attractive purple colour to it - this is when the spores will be produced inside minute tiny holes or rather 'pores' embedded on the undersurface.

When conditions are right, the spores drop by gravity, and are dispersed in the air currents.
Only a tiny fraction will land on the right type of surface, typically a bark wound, and grow into a new fungus.
I'm only guessing now, but before any new brackets are formed, the leaves develop a very distinctive silvery sheene which will make it standout from similar trees nearby and by now the tree will be dying and soon, or more likely the following year, the beautiful purple small brackets will appear.

Neil.

[Ladywell]

Thank you all for your help. So what would you advise - leave tree in situ and encourage something to grow tho' it (eg clematis) or take it down - it is c 40 years old but is on an estate where, methinks, people might not like to see a dead tree and wouldn't appreciate the benefit of a dead tree for wildlife.

[Chris Yeates]

Originally Posted by fairplay

I agree with Chris that this is most likely to be C.purpureum.

. . . . this is when the spores will be produced inside minute tiny holes or rather 'pores' embedded on the undersurface. . . . .

Neil.

confusingly although it is a member of the order Polyporales, Chondrostereum doesn't have pores (in an analogous fashion to the way in which Stereum - in the Russulales - doesn't have gills, and Melanogaster a pseudo-truffle in the Boletales doesn't look like a bolete!).

the spore-bearing surface of Chondrostereum is effectively smooth

from a plant hygiene point of view I daresay one should take the tree down and have it burnt, but there will almost certainly be spores of C. purpureum in the vicinity anyway (and indeed probably in the very room in which I am typing this . . . .) "everything is everywhere but the environment selects" to quote Baas Becking and Beijerinck (I know it is argued that that is a bit of a simplistic interpretation, but in this context I feel it holds good)

Chris