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 veggie
Registered: 07/25/04
Posts: 17,504
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 There's not mush room in here! [UK] 
#9153304 - 10/29/08 09:21 AM (15 years, 5 months ago) |
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The power of mushrooms ...
There's not mush room in here!
October 29, 2008 - BBC
A crop of mushrooms achieved the colossal feat of erupting through solid tarmac. A Woodley couple takes us through the astonishing story of the fearsome fungi that defeated their driveway
 Spinach has always been renowned for its strength-inducing qualities - as Popeye will verify, but who'd have thought the humble mushroom would also be known for their Goliath-like power?
David and Carolyn Phillips from Woodley in Reading couldn't believe it when they saw a part of the tarmac in their driveway start to erupt like a mole hill.
Their surprise turned to jaw-dropping awe when they discovered what caused the tough drive to crumble like a cake.
"Just over a week ago (in October 2008) we noticed a hump starting to appear in our tarmac driveway," they tell BBC Berkshire.
"Over the course of the following few days it started to grow into a sort of mini eruption."
The concerned pair contacted a local tree surgeon, surmising that only something as tough as a tree or shrub root could be the cause.
"He came out and confirmed that in his opinion it was not a tree root but possibly some sort of ground shifting, possibly a collapsed drain," David says.
However the local council and water board could not determine what the problem could be or how to deal with it. David and Carolyn were told that, as it was on their own land, they'd have to find their own solution.
A collapsed drain would mean digging up the whole driveway but the water board couldn't tell the couple exactly which way or where any drainage pipes travelled.
"Our only option was to lift up a nearby manhole cover which had become buried under hedging over the years," says David.
"Having chopped away a hole in the shrubbing to get to the manhole cover and enlisting the help of a neighbour to remove the cover, we found that it was a storm drain, which although going under the driveway did not appear to be anywhere near our 'eruption'."
So the mystery continued.
By this time, a week after David and Carolyn first noticed the lump, the tarmac had risen to around a foot in height.
"We decided to take the potential risk of having our whole driveway dug up and break open the area of lifted tarmac expecting the worst," says David.
"Instead out popped a clump of mushrooms!"
The tarmac driveway had been lain down 20 years ago with no indication that anything may have been growing underneath, so these mighty mushrooms have seemingly appeared out of nowhere.
"None of the people we had contacted could believe that the eruption on the driveway could be caused by mushrooms."
We can hardly believe it either!
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Bridgeburner
Not spiritual at all.
Registered: 09/16/06
Posts: 20,010
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Re: There's not mush room in here! [UK] [Re: veggie]
#9153379 - 10/29/08 09:44 AM (15 years, 5 months ago) |
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 MHbound
Ballin Out At All Cost
Registered: 09/24/07
Posts: 6,512
Loc: Under The Rainbow
Last seen: 7 years, 11 days
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Re: There's not mush room in here! [UK] [Re: Bridgeburner]
#9153389 - 10/29/08 09:47 AM (15 years, 5 months ago) |
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bloodsheen
ChemChaplin
Registered: 09/24/08
Posts: 7,659
Last seen: 4 years, 2 months
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Re: There's not mush room in here! [UK] [Re: MHbound]
#9153581 - 10/29/08 10:40 AM (15 years, 5 months ago) |
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how did the spores even get under the driveway in the first place? I wonder if they were there the whole time dormant and some random combination of elements allowed them to start growing
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A cautious young fellow named Lodge / Had seat belts installed in his Dodge. / When his date was strapped in / He committed a sin / Without even leaving the garage. That's clever, isn't it?-A boy and his dog
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Alan Rockefeller
Mycologist
Registered: 03/10/07
Posts: 48,364
Last seen: 19 hours, 58 minutes
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Re: There's not mush room in here! [UK] [Re: bloodsheen]
#9153906 - 10/29/08 12:06 PM (15 years, 5 months ago) |
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After 20 years it probably cracked enough to let water in there.
Looks like it could be in the genus Lentinus.
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today mylove
Registered: 12/04/04
Posts: 2,473
Last seen: 22 days, 2 hours
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das pretty coo
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CptnGarden
fuck this site
Registered: 05/13/04
Posts: 11,945
Last seen: 14 years, 11 months
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Re: There's not mush room in here! [UK] [Re: today mylove]
#9154434 - 10/29/08 02:30 PM (15 years, 5 months ago) |
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ive seen this before
be it a muscaria
mushrooms are most definitely strong little guys
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