In my last post, Dead Wood in the Landscape, I shared the biological benefits of leaving dead wood in our gardens and landscapes. In this post, I want to get more specific, describiing a sampling of the species that we see in our yard BECAUSE we have left dead wood where we can.
Before I start, I want to share a quote with you from Peter Wohlleben. In The Hidden Life of Trees, The Illustrated Edition, he writes of a tree that suddenly dies, "For centuries, the tree sucked nutrients from the ground and stored them in its wood and bark. And now it is a precious resource for its children. But they don't have direct access to the delicacies contained in their dead parents. To access them, the youngsters need the help of other organisms. As soon as the snapped trunk hits the ground, the tree and its root system become the site of a culinary relay race for thousands of species of fungi and insects. Each is specialized for a particular stage of the decomposition process and for a particular part of the tree. And this is why these species can never pose a danger to a living tree--it would be much too fresh for them. Soft, woody fibers and moist, moldy cells--these are the things they find delicious. ... In total, a fifth of the animal and plant species in Central European forests--that's about six thousand of the species we know about--depend on dead wood." (p. 78-81)
That same general richness of species depends on dead wood all over the world. Let's look at some of the ones I see in our yard, here in the eastern deciduous forest of North America.....
Pileated Woodpeckers could serve as the charismatic poster child for an animal that needs dead wood to have a healthy habitat. These big, beautiful woodpeckers not only nest in dead trees, but they obtain a large portion of their food in dead wood. Their diet is primarily made up of carpenter ants, along with wood-boring beetle larvae, termites, assorted other insects, and sometimes fruits and nuts.
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| Pileated Woodpecker foraging on downed wood along the paths April 26, 2023 |
Although Pileated Woodpeckers are fairly wary, it is not unusual for us to see them foraging on the dead wood in our yard. Getting decent photos can be a lot trickier, though, than simply seeing them!
Other woodpeckers use dead wood, too. Downy Woodpeckers, Red-bellied Woodpeckers, Hairy Woodpeckers, and Northern Flickers all nest in dead wood, sometimes in dead branches in living trees. Several of these species will also nest in living trees that are infected with heart rot fungus.
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| Every summer we see juvenile Red-bellied Woodpeckers, which means that their parents were able to build a successful nest in dead wood somewhere nearby. June 5, 2022 |
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| Mom is feeding her daughter (on the left). We see juvenile Downy Woodpeckers every year because they've been able to successfully build their nest in a large dead branch nearby. May 22, 2022 |
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| One year we even had this beautiful adult Red-headed Woodpecker stop by, another species that nests in dead wood. June 20, 2022 |
Woodpecker nest holes are frequently reused as nest sites by other cavity nesting birds such as Bluebirds, Great-crested flycatchers, Chickadees, Tufted Titmice, Screech Owls, White-breasted Nuthatches, Wrens, Swallows, and even Wood Ducks. During cold weather, woodpecker nests are often used as roosting sites for protection from the temperatures.
Birds aren't the only animals that reuse woodpecker nest holes. Squirrels, Flying Squirrels, even some species of bats will use these valuable spaces for nesting or winter shelter.
Skinks love to use the logs in our yard as basking sites and as pathways. As I shared in my last post, one pair nested in the rotting roots of the dead black gum tree.
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| An immature and a mature male Broad-headed Skink using logs as a basking site and pathway. May 18, 2023 |
I haven't found any in our yard yet, but many salamander species are found under or in rotting wood, too.
Many, many insect species spend at least part of their life cycle in dead wood. (Note: these insects use dead wood, not living wood, as the fibers are softer and decomposition is already occurring in the dead wood.)
Many beetle species lay their eggs in snags, logs, or dead branches and their larvae eat the decaying wood, then pupate there, all safely protected from prying eyes. Protected from prying eyes...but not from woodpecker bills and tongues! Beetle larvae are prime woodpecker food, and the woodpeckers help keep the beetle populations balanced and under control.
Last year I noticed a big jump in beetles feeding at and pollinating flowers in our yard. It turns out that most of the new species I saw have larval stages that develop in dead wood. One of my favorites is the uniquely marked Delta Flower Scarab (Trigonopeltastes delta). I also saw Tumbling Flower Beetles (Mordella sp.) and Emerald Flower Scarabs (Trichiotinus lunulatus).
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| A Delta Flower Scarab on Meadowsweet (Spiraea alba) June 11, 2024 |
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| An Emerald Flower Scarab and a Tumbling Flower Beetle on Meadowsweet (Spiraea alba) June 8, 2024 |
There are several species of flower longhorn beetles that showed up last year, too, all of whom spend their larval stage in dead wood: Slender Flower Longhorns ((Strangalia famelica), Red-winged Longhorn Beetles (Brachyleptura rubrica), and Red-shouldered Flower Longhorns (Brachyleptura vagans).
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| Slender Flower Longhorn on Meadowsweet (Spiraea alba) June 5, 2024 |
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| Red-winged Longhorn Beetle on Meadowsweet (Spiraea alba) June 5, 2024 |
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| Red-shouldered Flower Longhorn on Meadowsweet (Spiraea alba) June 11, 2024 |
The larvae of these species are some of insects that woodpeckers and other animals are eating when they feed on snags or logs.
It's not just woodpeckers that prey on beetle grubs, though. There are other beetle species whose larvae are predators on the wood-boring beetle larvae. An example of a beetle species with predatory larvae is the Eyed Click Beetle (Alaus oculatus).
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| Eyed Click Beetle, whose larvae are predators on the larvae of wood-boring beetles July 14, 2020 |
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| An Ichneumon Wasp (Spilopteron occiputale) that lays its eggs in the larvae of longhorn beetle larvae. July 2, 2024 |
Then there are yet other beetles whose larvae develop in dead wood, beetles like False Mealworm Beetles (Alobates pensylvanicus) who are predatory on other insects, or like Horned Passalus Beetles (Odontotaenius disjunctus), who live in small colonies in dead wood and whose adults feed their larvae pre-chewed rotting wood.
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| False Mealworm Beetle that was living under the bark in the dead black gum trunk. August 11, 2023 |
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| Horned Passalus Beetle, a species that lives in colonies in dead wood. June 30, 2022 |
About 30% of the solitary native bees nest in places like stems or in beetle larvae tunnels in dead wood. Pure Green Sweat Bees (Augochlora pura) are one of the species that I see in the yard that use beetle galleries in dead wood for their nests and whose fertilized females overwinter under logs. Seeing these jewel-like pollinators gives me a real lift.
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| Pure Green Sweat Bee on Wrinkle-leaf Goldenrod (Solidago rugosa) October 13, 2023 |
Eastern Carpenter Bees (Xylocopa virginica), who are fabulous pollinators, excavate their own tunnels in dead wood to use as nest sites. It's disconcerting to have Eastern Carpenter Bees use a railing or the eave of a house, but they naturally use dead wood in the landscape for their tunnels. Keeping your wood surfaces well painted can encourage these guys to nest elsewhere.
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| Eastern Carpenter Bee on Hairy Elephant's Foot (Elephantopus tomentosus) August 20, 2023 |
I really dislike disturbing animals, so I haven't actually broken into or looked under the dead wood, standing or downed, to see what animals I can find by direct observation. Someday I may. Meanwhile, throughout the year, I'm enjoying the various species that I see specifically because we have logs and snags in our yard.
I've talked about some of the animals we see in our yard because of dead wood, but there are many fungi, mosses, and lichens we see for the same reason and it's been fascinating to see how many there actually are. I know little about fungi, so I can't identify most of these, but I still enjoy looking at them. Learning more about them is definitely on my "to do" list.
The first photo is of a slime mold rather than a fungus. Slime molds are unique, with some characteristics of fungi and some characteristics, believe it or not, of animals. I've only seen these "chocolate pom-poms" once, on a decaying stump, but when I looked them up, they are a well known species called Chocolate Tube Slime Mold (Stemonitis splendens). Although some slime molds can look gross, they are decomposers and are not dangerous. They disappear when environmental conditions change.
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| These "chocolate pom-poms" are actually Chocolate Tube Slime Mold June 19, 2023 |
On that same stump, about 10 months before the Chocolate Tube Slime Mold appeared, I found a fungus known as Black-staining Polypore (Meripilus sumstinei). This cluster was young, and I find it very elegant looking, especially from the side. This species is considered edible, but I'm not good enough at identification to take a chance on eating it.
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| Black-staining Polypore August 21, 2022 |
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| The same clump of mushrooms, Black-staining Polypore, photographed from the top. August 21, 2022 |
I have no idea what species this fungus is, but I love the lacy texture. Note the bit of lichen at its base.
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| Unknown lacy fungus with lichen at its base, found on a dead hardwood branch. August 8, 2024 |
To myself, I call the round clusters of fungal structures that are found in the next photo, "fungal roses". That is, you understand, a totally unscientific name but they remind me of the paper flowers that I used to make when I wanted a pop of color on a table or bookcase. As with the fungus above, I do not know the name of this species.
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| "Fungal rose" on log May 29, 2023 |
I'm including this last photo as much for the moss as for the fungus. This is another fungus for which I do not know the name, nor do I know the name of the moss, but they both were growing on the same stump where I found the Chocolate Tube Slime Mold and the Black-staining Polypore cluster. Moss and lichen are both frequently found on dead wood.
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| "Prickly fungus" in a bed of moss on a stump by our driveway. October 25, 2023 |
When we remove dead wood from the landscape, we are effectively starving the ecosystem.
Why do we instinctively feel that dead wood needs to be removed? Well, probably at least in part because it's "dead" and we generally don't like to be reminded of death as a part of life. In our phobia about death, we've trained ourselves to think that any dead plant material is "ugly" - and ugly things need to be removed from our surroundings.
However, dead wood isn't ugly, and it's chock full of nutrients that will feed a broad range of other life forms, including other trees. Scientists have learned that even dead limbs shed by trees actually decompose into extra food that ends up feeding the tree from which they fell. If the tree is stressed, shedding limbs can reduce the amount of living tissue it has to support during the stressful time as well as give it that boost of energy and nutrition as the dead wood decomposes.
In Victorian times, "stumperies" became popular in gardens - think of a rock garden, but using stumps and dead wood instead of rocks. Stumperies are making a comeback in some gardens and can be very attractively planted, benefitting both human aesthetic sensibilities and ecological needs.
In whatever way works for your garden aesthetic, I hope that you'll seriously consider adding a snag or some logs to your garden. In doing so, you'll be adding important habitat for a wide variety of species.
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