Jess Hardiman
A woman was forced to turn to Facebook for advice after a ‘terrifying’ discovery beneath her old floorboards, leaving even experts stumped.
The Australian woman posted the disturbing images on Facebook, telling Yahoo News that she’d done so on behalf of her friend.
Her pal had lifted up the wet floorboards to unearth a bizarre web-like growth that looks like something straight out of Stranger Things or The Last of Us.
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The snaps show the floor covered in a strange dark pattern, which stretches across the ground.
The Facebook user shared them on a local group to see if anyone else had ‘any ideas what this is’, though unsurprisingly many people were absolutely baffled.
Some people suggested it could be ‘mycelium’, ‘slime mould’ or tree roots of some sort’, but the community were unable to come to a clear conclusion.
“I'm genuinely terrified,” one wrote.
Even some experts were left scratching their heads, with one from the state herbarium in Brisbane telling Yahoo: "It's a new one to me too. Certainly doesn't look like traditional mould.”
He added: "The only thing I know that looks remotely like that are the rhizomorphs of Armillaria (honey fungi), but that doesn't make a lot of sense.”
According to Britannia, a rhizomorph is a ‘threadlike or cordlike structure in fungi’, made up of ‘parallel hyphae, branched tubular filaments that make up the body of a typical fungus’.
Elizabeth Aitken, Professor in Plant Pathology at the University of Queensland, also agreed that it ‘looks like the rhizomorphs of a wood rot fungus’.
She explained: "Whether this is the dry rot fungus or something else they would need to take samples or ask a timber specialist."
Dr Heike Neumeister-Kemp, Principal Mycologist at Managing Director of Mycolab added: “This is definitely, fungal mycelium most likely from a basidiomycetes,” referring to a type of fungi which are ‘actually not dangerous’ and will form a fruiting body (toadstool or mushroom).