It’s always sad to see a mighty old tree fall, no more to see its bare branches flush with green in early spring or hear the blackbird singing in the evening dusk from its high branches.

This huge old tree came down one wild and stormy night last winter and was soon sawn into manageable, though still huge logs by council staff. Fortunately, those logs were not removed, but merely hauled off the woodland path so, though the tree is dead, its wood is now home to an amazing display of fungi.

I suspect fungi may have contributed to its demise as there is an enormous amount of wood-rotting Honey fungus spouting forth around its roots. It’s a little difficult to separate out this tree and its branches from the surrounding small trees and old stumps but the whole small area is now awash with fungal growth, including Burgundydrop bonnet, Hairy curtain crust and Turkeytail, the Porcelain fungus that I blogged about recently, a species of Oysterling and another of Brittlestem, as well as at least one slime mould, Trichia varia. The poor old tree lives on by providing nutrients to all these other living organisms.