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Heads up on that weird root flare fungus in the Pacific Northwest
Honestly, diagnosing that on a bigleaf maple in Seattle took me almost 8 hours because it looked like mechanical damage at first. Anyone else run into this and have a faster ID method?
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umaf441mo ago
Seriously? Eight hours is wild. I'd argue you should skip the soil test entirely (sorry @the_drew) and go straight for the bark. That fungus makes these weird, stringy patterns under loose bark that nothing else really does. Mechanical damage looks torn, but this stuff looks like someone drew on the tree with white thread. I wasted a whole day on pH once when the answer was literally right under my nose.
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river_scott15d ago
And that white thread pattern is a dead giveaway, every time. I've peeled back bark on a hunch before and found it weaving through the cambium like a spider's web. Honestly, once you know what to look for, it's faster than any test.
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