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  • From: Caren Kirk <quirky@videotron.ca>
  • To: North American Fruit Explorers <nafex@lists.ibiblio.org>
  • Subject: Re: [NAFEX] Danger to fruit trees from oyster mushrooms
  • Date: Wed, 12 May 2010 07:55:56 -0400

Andryi,

I have first-hand experience with this. Somehow one of my maples got infected with what looks exactly like the description of oyster mushrooms given in the link. Then, in a strong gust of wind, the rotten heart of the tree couldn't take the force and it cracked, sending 30ft of maple down on top of one of my apple trees!

So oyster mushrroms can kill fruit trees!

My question is will this readily spread to other trees? I still have about 7ft of maple trunk covered in mushrooms that I was actually just going to let sit there until nature takes its course (in fact I was thinking of building a tree house above it for the kids). I always thought that the maple was attacked because it had gotten damaged and weakened in a previous storm, so I wasn't worried about the oyster mushrooms attacking the surrounding healthy trees.

Does anyone know if the mushrooms will spread to the other trees? Should I get rid of the leftover trunk ASAP?

Caren Kirk
St. Jerome, QC.
----- Original Message ----- From: "Andriy Palamarchuk" <apa3a@yahoo.com>
To: "North American Fruit Explorers" <nafex@lists.ibiblio.org>
Sent: Tuesday, May 11, 2010 4:05 PM
Subject: [NAFEX] Danger to fruit trees from oyster mushrooms


I was entertaining an idea of trying to grow Oyster Mushrooms (Pleurotus ostreatus), for example from this kit http://www.fungi.com/kits/indoor.html .

Online search shows that these mushrooms can attack live trees as well as dead material. Want to share the results of my search.

Has anybody seen Oyster mushroom attacking fruit trees?

"Wood Decay Fungi in Landscape Trees" http://www.ipm.ucdavis.edu/PMG/PESTNOTES/pn74109.html gives this list:

acacia, alder, ash, beech, birch, chestnut, elm, eucalyptus, fir, hackberry, holly, horse chestnut, linden, magnolia, maple, oak, pecan, persimmon, poplar, spruce, tulip tree, walnut, and willow

... and this description of the disease:

"Fungus decays heartwood and sapwood, causing a white, flaky rot. Infections occur through open wounds and decay is most extreme when wounds are large. A cluster of shelflike mushrooms, each 2-8 inches wide, is produced annually and can indicate localized decay or heart rot that extends 10 feet in either direction. The mushrooms are smooth on the upper surface with gills that characteristically extend down along the stalk on the lower surface. "

It can attack grapes:
http://www.apsnet.org/pd/SEARCH/1995/PD_79_1187C.asp

And, most dangerously, Oyster mushrooms can attack toilet paper!
http://www.anbg.gov.au/fungi/ecology-woodrot.html

:-)

I'll pass growing Oyster mushrooms for now.

I would not be surprised if Oyster mushrooms has actually different subspecies, some of which are not parasitic at all. This is the situation, for example, with Honey mushroom (Armillaria mellea). It turns out there are more than a dozen of species, which are hard to distinguish from each other. Some of these species were found to be purely saprophytic, others are very virulent.

Andriy



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