Guest Post by Hardscrabble Farmer
“The study of plant diseases for their own sake is proving an increasingly intricate game, to which modern scientists have devoted many wasted hours. Such studies would be amusing if they were not tragic, for no disease in plant, animal, or man can properly be viewed unless it is looked on as an interference with, or to speak more plainly, as the distortion or negation of that positive aspect of the growing organism which we call health.” ― Albert Howard, The Soil and Health: A Study of Organic Agriculture
Every year right about this time large clusters of chicken of the woods mushrooms appear on the root base of one of the big white oaks at the end of the esker. Laetiporus, an especially flavorful mushroom with an otherworldly orange hue, only appears once it has been well established within the heartwood. Basidiomycetes are indicators of a tree that is entering terminal decline and once this process begins it is simply a matter of time until it dies.
