This all came up last week while I was watching our birch trees blow in the wind. For some reason, I was taken back 10 or 15 years. We had lots and lots of aphids in our trees back then.

Birch Bracket (Piptoporus betulinus - also known as Razor Strop) is one of the most common polyporous bracket fungi and, as the name suggests, grows almost exclusively on Birch trees. The brackets ...

It tends to grow on birch, ash, elm, and beech trees. In general, a tree has to be damaged in some way for chaga to take hold. Once infected, the fungus can live in the tree for 80 years or more.

The fungus, which is very common across the Northern Hemisphere, also plays a crucial role in its ecosystem, blooming on the bark of rotting beech and birch trees to aid the decomposition process.