Parasitised fungus ?

[BorderReiver]

Bimbling about in my usual wood this morning,I found a tree on which were two horse shoe fungi.Both looked as if they had been liberally dusted with a thick layer of flour.

Do Fomes suffer from parasitic attack by other fungi?

[British Red]

I've seen the huge amount of brown powder caused by bracket fungi before (looks like a rusty tree) - I wonder if the white powder is spores?

Red

[BorderReiver]

I've seen the huge amount of brown powder caused by bracket fungi before (looks like a rusty tree) - I wonder if the white powder is spores?

Red

It felt like soft flour and was pure white..It was all over the upper surface of the Fomes.Don't think it was Fomes spores.

None of the others in the wood had any on them.

[xylaria]

:confused: I have seen other fungi growing on trees that have been covered in a white dust which wasn't thier spores. I had a experiance a few years ago where I picked a massive basket full of pholiotas(spores are brown!) and because they had this white dust all underneth them had presumed they were a bumper crop of honey fungus(spores are white). So without further testing I fried them up with garlic, luckly for me they taste disgusting. The lessons you only need to learn once :rolleyes: .

In some speices the white dust can be spores. Horseshoe fungi do have white spores but they rarely seem to produce them in large quanities. Artist conk makes massive amounts of brown spores which end up on the top side of bracket. In this case it sounds more likely to be simerlar to what I found on the pholiota rather than spores, as when I have seen this phenomena there is a large volume of dust and it is more grainy than normal spores. No idea what it acually is though.