Dave writes
A few of years ago I had to cut down a large cherry tree in our garden. It
wasn't dead but I'd cut off many branches over the years to keep the neighbours
happy. Anyway some of the pieces of cherry were pretty large (1 foot diam, 3
feet long) and in my Darwin award plan I decided to do a bit of eco'ing. I made
a couple of wood piles of cherry at the far end of the garden (we leave
that bit
to do what it will). I'd read that this can be a good idea and lots of bugs etc
get to live there and it's a little eco-world of it's own. This has
proved to be
the case over several years now.

Now the problem! Yesterday I was on safari at the far reaches of our garden
(about 30 yards from the house!) and noticed one of these large chunks of wood
had fungus on it. A very spectacular layered fungus (pic on request). Actually
this piece had rolled away and disappeared under a holly bush which is why I
hadn't seen it before. Now it is nearly always wet under there. Anyway I looked
up the type of fungus and it looks to me like DRY ROT!!! Arrgg! and similar
expressions! So the problem is do I try and get this hefty log into a plastic
bag and to the tip? Or does disturbing it risk spread spores so best to just
leave it? My concern is that it's not that far from the house - so is there any
danger of it getting there? There is a path nearby so we walk down there quite
often.

I've seen what dry rot can do to a house and it doesn't appeal to me very much.

All rotting wood will eventually attract a fungus of some kind. There
are many fungi which live on rotting wood and most of them are not dry
rot (one of them is the 'oyster mushroom' that you find in upmarket
supermarkets).

Identification of fungi is quite tricky - lots of them do look alike if
you're not into fungi. Just because is looks like dry rot doesn't mean
it is. Doesn't mean it isn't, either.

The air is full of fungus spores. Whether or not you dispose of this
log, you are likely to get dry rot if you have wood in damp and
unventilated conditions anywhere in your house.

If it's worrying you, get rid of it - it'll nag at the back of your
mind, and if you do get dry rot, you will think 'if only I'd got rid of
that log ...'. If you're worried about spores, cover the fruiting body
with cling film before you manoeuvre the log into a large plastic bag.
--
Kay