What is this purple stuff on my firewood

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12Walt

New Member
Dec 1, 2025
2
CA
I got 1/2 cord oak and madrone. Much of it has some white fuzzy mildew, and most of it has this bright purple stuff all over it. Some of it's fuzzy, some looks like it's painted on there like a hard lacquer.
Amazingly it doesn't show up that well on my camera phone. Digital photography has a long way to go. May it'll show up correctly on your monitor or maybe you can tweak the settingsl
[Hearth.com] What is this purple stuff on my firewood
 
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I got 1/2 cord oak and madrone. Much of it has some white fuzzy mildew, and most of it has this bright purple stuff all over it. Some of it's fuzzy, some looks like it's painted on there like a hard lacquer.
Amazingly it doesn't show up that well on my camera phone. Digital photography has a long way to go. May it'll show up correctly on your monitor or maybe you can tweak the settingslView attachment 342963
Google says it's a fungus among us

Purple Fungus on google
 
[Hearth.com] What is this purple stuff on my firewood
 

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I got this last fall on this 36" dia. Red Oak. It was dead standing for a year or 2. Oak wilt or another oak disease/fungus got 3 red oaks that year, all within 50 -100 ft. of each other. So far the huge white oak nearby is ok.

There were multiple nails, screws, wire deep within this tree. I counted the rings and it was about 80-100 years old.
 
I’ve had bright orange sappy fungus before but no purple. Looks cool!
 
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It's call purple stuff.

If you mix it with water it becomes a degreaser.

If you let it dry and grind it up and eat it, either it will cure all of you ailments or kill you. I can't remember...
 
Wow. That is some bright fungus.
 
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I agree, some sort of wild looking fungus. Is the wood dry?
Got delivered in a huge downpour. Covered with some tarps, but still got pretty wet. Fortunately we've had a week of sunshine...startin to dry out. So I'm wondering if I should keep this stuff. Some forums and even the 'all knowing' AI say absolutely don't burn it, get it out of the stack. Some say just burn it. Gotta be some truth to this somewhere. No, I ain't gonna eat it, feed it to the horses, or decorate the place for the holidays
 
I’d let the wood dry. With oak this can take 3 years to reach below 20% moisture content. Then burn it.

Fungus doesn’t grow on dry wood. You were sold wet wood.
 
The purple staining went away in a few days for me. It's been split and stacked for over a year now and there is no purple color at all. I'm definitely going to be burning it next year or the year after.
 
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