This is on an old stump of a giant, 100' red oak, that was already decaying before a storm pushed it over about 4 years ago. (fortunately, away from my yard into a farmer's field; he was all too happy to have the free firewood) The stump had already decayed to the point of being black and humusy looking, albeit w/little visible fungi. We've had the rainiest summer here in at least 8 years, but the astonishing thing about this fungus is how quickly it appeared. I was just in this part of the garden no more than 3 days ago, and nothing like this was visible on the stump. It now covers several square feet.

The fact it appeared so quickly and so widespread makes me think the spores were probably there all along and just waiting for conditions ideal to germinate. I've hardly planted any nursery stock in this area so I don't think it's an "imported" strain of honey fungus, less likely to be benign, but rather a native one. Still it's alarming because in my 20+ years of gardening, I've never seen what I thought was a honey fungus, nor have I seen a fungus grow so quickly.
{{gwi:811911}}

PIcture gives it an illusion of being smaller than it really is; I'm sure the largest of those caps are at least 3" across.

This post was edited by davidrt28 on Sun, Sep 1, 13 at 16:15