Bracket fungi jutting out like wooden shelves. Brown spores shower onto the trunk beneath them like a fine sawdust. Their tops are hard as bark, and strong. I can hold my weight hanging off them.

These mushrooms are one with their tree, and will survive as long as their host does. They gut out the dead heartwood as the tree dies from inside, leaving just the outer ring of living wood. The beech become great hollow giants. Living corpses.