Help! I have a mushroom type fungus that has sprung up all over my flowerbed and it keeps growing. What is it and how can I get rid of it. It does not appear to be Fuligo septica, aka dog vomit slime mold. It has the texture of a mushroom and it spreads to the lawn very easily. I dig it up and in some areas it does not return but in other areas, like against the brick wall or at the base of plants, it keeps coming back. It seem to appear during the hot monsoon times here in Phoenix. Any help would be great! Thanks, Dave
Photos #2 and #3 look as if they might be polypore fruiting bodies: Are they firm or hard, or are they flabby? Is the underside smooth or porous, or another kind of surface? Could they be growing from wood in the building and/or wood under the soil? I can't tell much from photo #1. - frog
Frog, They are smooth on the top surface and porous on the bottom side. They split or break fairly easy and they feel like firm mud when they split. This particular area has no wood chips in it and they do seem to have a sort of tap root that extends down into the dirt. In the first picture I was trying to capture how they look just growing in the moist dirt. It looks like you spilled some type of wet plaster on the dirt. It has no distinct roundness to it but that of something spilled. I will google "polypore fruiting bodies" and see if there are any pictures. Thanks, Dave
Thanks for the details Dave, It seems very likely that your specimens are growing from wood in some form, such as well rotted wood in the ground or perhaps this is a "root rot" growing from tree roots running next to the building. If so, getting rid of it involves depriving it, in some manner, of its wood food, as the fruiting bodies are just the visible portion of the fungus inhabiting its wood substrate. Determining which fungus species this is could help in this, by determining what exactly it is eating. The texture you are describing, plus the white topside colour, is making me wonder whether this could be something in the "cheese polypores" group (eg Tyromyces, Oligoporus & others), but there are still many polypores that this could be. I'm hoping someone in the forum from your general region will weigh in on this one: Is this critter ringing a bell with anyone? -frog
Frog, Someone suggested "texas root rot" but I have not seen any pictures that resemble it. I have seen it around the base of a tree or bush but it also grows right out in the open, away from anything. It does also grow in layers on the wall and bricks and that did resemble some of the other polypore types that were growing on trees in some of the pictures I've seen but the colors did not match those. Dave
