For more than three years now there has been a massive pile of felled Leylandii quietly occupying a corner of our garden. In the first instance, I misunderstood its burning ability. I thought it was not an appropriate type of wood to burn indoors because of resin coating the inside of the chimney. I later discovered that it’s only not recommended for open fires and that’s nothing to do with it gunking up the chimney, it’s to do with it having a tendency to spit and therefore is a fire hazard.

Well, that’s all right then. We’ve got a stove so the fire is contained and therefore the risk of spitting is considerably reduced. That’s not to say it doesn’t happen – we have had one or two instances, when the vents are all open, that a spit has made its way into the room but as we crank everything down and close all of the vents when we are out of the room, we can feel pretty confident that burning it won’t cause us any danger.

Now that we’ve chainsawed it all and chopped it into fire-sized pieces, I’m relieved to say that my worry about the chainsaw does not need to rear its ugly head again (at least until we find ourselves in receipt of another giant load of timber). The pile of logs has disappeared and in another part of the garden there is a supply of winter fuel.

As the logs have been pulled from the pile and sawn up, we’ve stripped the bark off them (not wasted – dried out and stored to use as kindling) and discovered that while the pile has been quietly sitting there, a wonderful natural interaction between the tree and this fungi has been occurring. Many people think that fungi are plants but they’re not. They occupy a unique position in the biology of the world and they can be huge. In fact, the world’s largest single living organism is a type of fungi.

These particular fungi mycelium, seen as the dark fingers on this wood have been spreading and growing throughout the cambium between the bark and the wood of the tree, sourcing their nutrients from the timber and starting the decomposition process – the fungi uses the tree’s resources and contributes to the group of detritivores that would eventually return the wood to basic nutrients that can be rebuilt into other life. I LOVE this process. It’s biology in action.

Unfortunately in this case the fungi won’t get to complete its task because the wood will be burned before it’s been broken down by the detritivores, whether animal, vegetable, fungi, bacterial or viruses.

I’m a scientist, me!