Mulch fungus question

[Doug Casserly]

I have a wood chip mulch pile that is two years old and have an odd fungus growing in portions of it. The trees were maple, oak, mulberry.

The fungus is white and crunchy with white threadlike strings emanating from it. The best description I can make is white colored "cheetos" with white threads emanating.....

Does anyone know what that is and can I ignore it and use the mulch for shrubs, etc?

thanks

[opabinia51]

I can't tell you what type of fungust you have but, most likely it is just feeding on the wood chips. What it is doing is breaking down the wood chps into soil. The threads that you see are the fungal mycelia or cells in long filamentous lines.

I wouldn't worry about mulching your beds with it. Just be sure that you don't use any poisons in the garden so that you have a healthy ecosystem of macro and mycro organisms so that this fungus doesn't become an opportunistic pathogen.