Honey Fungus Diagnosis needed
GardenNovice2
Posts: 1
Hello
Before anything else, please accept my apologies for my lack of knowledge. I am a total novice! Other than knowing that somethings look prettier than others and something grow better in different level sof light, my knowledge is pretty much zilch!
I have a hedge that is quickly dying. When we moved to the house 3 years ago it was a section about 3ft that was dead/brown/dying. Three years later and it has spread to a section about 12ft wide, and also sprang up in another area about 2ft wide. I have been trying to work out what is causing it and am worried uit might be the dreaded honey fungus. This is mainly because it is the only thing that I can find as a possible cause on the internet, but i am not sure the garden has any symptoms of it...
The plants in front of the hedge are fine. My husband has tried to grow some climbers in the hedge to fill the gaps e.g. ivy; this has been relatively successful but very slow. The most likely cause of the fungus is the (non fruit bearing) cherry tree, however this is very much alive and although it doesn’t bare fruit it does flower each year. Also the flowers at the base of the tree appear fine, currently the daffs planted last year have come back up! Finally, although there is some green mould/dust on the bark there are no white spots and I cannot seem to find any of the shoestring black roots either.
So I guess my questions are..
1, Could the tree be infected with honey fungus but the disease only be effecting the nearby hedge?
2. Could the fungus be coming from somewhere/thing else altogether?
3. Could it be something else causing the death of my hedge, something totally different and not honey fungus at all?
Any ideas would be greatly appreciated. We hate having such an exposed garden particularly as the neighbours garden is so un kept and ugly and the neighbours themselves are pretty horrendous to have to observe. We really want to ignore them; but that’s hard to do when we can see straight through to their garden and vice versa.
Eagerly waiting someone's kind assistance
Thanks
Posts
1) No
2) Yes
3) Yes
Honey fungus produces clusters of mushrooms in late summer to autumn. Very obvious. When it kills a tree there are black boot lace like rhizomes beneath the bark, very easy to see. It spreads by spores or rhizomes in the soil, which may be many metres long. Perhaps there is a toxin in the soil, or water stress?