Heart rot
decay of wood at the center of the trunk and branches
In trees, heart rot is a fungal disease that causes the decay of wood at the center of the trunk and branches. Fungi enter the tree through wounds in the bark and decay the heartwood. The diseased heartwood softens, making trees structurally weaker and prone to breakage. Heart rot is a major factor in the economics of logging and the natural growth dynamic of many older forests. Heart rot is prevalent throughout the world affecting all hardwood trees and can be very difficult to prevent. A good indication of heart rot is the presence of mushrooms or fungus conks on the tree.
Biological cause
Heart rot is caused by fungi entering the trunk of the tree through wounds in the bark. These wounds are areas of the tree where bare wood is exposed and usually, a result of improper pruning, fire damage, dead branches, insects, or even animal damage. The fungal spores enter the exposed wounds, germinate within the wood tissues, and slowly ingest the heartwood. The infection is a very slow process and can take from months to years, depending on conditions and tree health.
This brief starts where responsible research should: with the source description of “Heart rot” as decay of wood at the center of the trunk and branches. Everything that follows is an evidence route, not borrowed authority.
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The citation trail is more important than the brevity of the summary: it shows where individual claims can be examined in context. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 13, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q5692479. None of the 0 selected statements returned an explicit reference.
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This entry incorporates text from “Heart rot” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.