A Balanced View of Fungus and Trees

[guymayor]

http://tcia.org/TCI-publicati…/tci-magazine/…/06/index.html…

Great article on relationships between fungus and trees, from Drs. Smith and Glaeser, who know the subject. A refreshing break from assessors who know little but view interior decay with fear, loathing, and phony formulas.

"Arborists need to be aware that the mere presence of decayed wood or a cavity does not mean that tree is likely to die or structurally fail in the foreseeable future."

"...expert questioned whether wood decay in...heartwood that lacked living cells, could be considered a disease."

"...even large volumes of decaying wood or even open cavities do not necessarily confer a great degree of risk...The challenge for the practitioner is to accurately assess NOT how much wood has been lost to decay, but to assess
1. the quality and quantity of the wood that remains, and
2. the strength of the response growth of the tree to compensate for injury, infection and decay."

 

[KTSmith]

Thanks Guy for the post. I thought about drawing attention to that article, but then thought that I'd see if anyone else noticed or cared to bring it up. A copy is also linked to: https://www.nrs.fs.fed.us/pubs/54267 .
It's funny, but in more than thirty years of authorship in this job, this was the first article of mine flagged during Forest Service internal review for questionable consistency with government policy. Not the acid rain stuff, not the climate change stuff. Actually, a new assistant director thought that I shouldn't be telling readers what they should be doing. I had to laugh, TCI and Arborist News editors usually ask me to be more directive rather than less! No harm done, we worked it out.
There have been and will continue to be some key retirements from the US Center for Forest Mycology, including Dr. Glaeser, coming up through 2018. There's a big world mycological congress in 2018, and most folks want to see that through in their official positions. It's unclear as to whether anyone other than me is particularly concerned about the loss of expertise.

 

[guymayor]

Kevin, thank you!

I wonder what it was about the directive-ness that raised the red flag; maybe because ecological awareness is not as valued as, and perhaps seen as a threat to, the mechanical view of trees that prevails in the North American industry? As you know, the ANSI Standard and the BMP on IPM are both by design deliberately devoid of any clue about how to handle fungus, except with a machine.

 

[JD3000]

Do the Standard and BMP even address decay fungi? Thought it was just the basic spray em and forget em crap

 

[guymayor]

Halloween in San Juan, hmmmm....wonder if they will accept a poster (or more) from a lowly practitioner?

 

[guymayor]

Do the Standard and BMP even address decay fungi? Thought it was just the basic spray em and forget em crap

The A300 Part 8 mentions "
• Tree association with pathogenic
and beneficial microorganisms (e.g.
mycorrhizae)
• Wounds, and the tree’s response
to wounds
• Mechanical damage to detectable roots,
and response
• Indications of root disease and response"

but that is during Inspection; nothing in Part 9 Risk and Part 10 IPM about managing fungus,some verbiage re drilling and killing.

 

[KTSmith]

With respect to the International Mycological Congress in Puerto Rico (July 16-21, 2018, http://imc11.com/guidelines-for-oral-poster-presentations/), they should be soliciting poster abstracts this month. I think there would be some interest in Guy's stuff with the fungal ecology group. I'm not on the "inside" of the organizing groups anymore. I used to be Jean Lodge's supervisor (local co-chair in PR) as well as Jessie's, and know more than a few of the central characters, but I'm on the outer fringe. Why I let that happen, I don't know. Spent more time with arborists, I suppose.

 

[guymayor]

We are such fascinating people--gettin' real in the real world!