Chain Reaction

Edward Hopkins introduces two surgeons to four stumps.

- Edward Hopkins

Rarely (if ever, I’m glad to say) have I gone from awe to desire to disgust so fast. It was late October. In the garden, along an old field boundary, we had four large oak stumps. On one of them I saw the most fantastic bouquet of orange fungus looking like Islamic plasterwork in its wonderful intricacy and convolution. It was stunningly beautiful. Straight away, I wanted to know if it was edible. I went inside to find out. It was Armillaria mellea, or honey fungus. That sounded tasty. Some authorities say it is edible if parboiled, but others say it causes gastric upset. And it is easily confused with Galerina marginata, otherwise known, unequivocally, as ‘Funeral bell’. Best not, I thought. But worse than that, it seemed on first reading to be a devastating destroyer, from which nothing in the garden was safe. There was no known cure but fire.

I checked the other stumps. Three out of four were visibly infected. A few paces away from one of them was one of the huge flourishing oak trees that make the view from our house so appealing. I had a vision of our entire garden devastated and shrivelled into black and white – dotted everywhere with bright orange mushrooms. I hated the stuff.

Bootlaces

Honey fungus replicates not by spores but by ‘bootlaces’ – thin black straps that travel laterally in the top layer of soil. Obeying one website, I dug a trench beyond Stump#1. #1. It exposed none of these, and I felt mildly reassured. My instinct told me that these stumps were infected because they were ailing (two were completely dead) and that a vibrant tree would resist contamination. Otherwise, logic told me, the entire woodland beyond would be wasteland. Nevertheless, logic also said that these stumps would have to go. They were too big for me to manage, and we called a tree surgeon.

Ross & John