Rainlilies & Stagonospora

Nhu Nguyen xerantheum@gmail.com
Wed, 25 Dec 2013 12:43:02 PST
Merry Christmas everyone!

I finally have some time to try and catch up with posts on the forum. This
response is a little late but I feel that its important to say a few things
about the topic of mycorrhizal fungi, which is what I study.

Mycorrhizal fungi are divided into two groups, the ectomycorrhizal fungi
which associate with trees and arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi which associate
with mostly herbs, grasses, and sometimes trees. Members of the pine family
such as pine, spruce, fir, douglas fir are obligately dependent on
ectomycorrhizal fungi and vice versa. However, it's hard to say that the
white hyphal threads you observe underneath pine/alder trees are
mycorrhizal. More often than not, they are saprobic fungi, and are only
interested in breaking down the dead leaves.

The observation that leaf mould with white hyphae protects bulbs is
interesting and make good ecological sense. You're using one group of fungi
to outcompete another group. In this case, using saprobic fungi to
out-compete pathogenic fungi. The saprobic fungi will take over the growing
medium and excludes pathogenic fungi from entering the arena, thus
protecting the plants. For the most part, plant pathogens don't make
visible hyphae because the hyphae will grow inside the plant and not in the
substrate where they cannot compete well with saprobic fungi.

Nhu

On Sat, Dec 7, 2013 at 1:17 PM, Mark BROWN <brown.mark@wanadoo.fr> wrote:

> The bases of the stalks with some mycorhiza present was enough.
> The white threads soon colonized the whole heap and gave quite a crop on
> and off as a bonus.
> I don't know what species I have in the leafmould though.



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