help please

can anyone identify this white substance, been looking for over a year now.

it seems like chalk a bit soft when wet, but there is a substantial amount of it, not too deep i did find an old water pipe solid with it pic attached

thanks in advance

 

@scott hones
First thing that sprang mind was fungal mycelia.
Where did you find it, underground, above ground, in a damp place? Is there a smell associated with it, if mushroomy then fungal mycelia is the most likely.
Do you live in a hard water area? Was the old pipe connected to anything?

 

i thought it was mycelia too no smell no mushrooms its quite hard and brittle when dry coming up in very large chunks could it be that someone in the past 60 years has dumped chalk or lime that was my other thought, it is also very light

 

thanks for rely, have posted a reply dont know if i done it right ! lol

 

I get clumps of mycelium in parts of my garden, but its usually growing around and through organic matter in the ground.
It isn't in actual solid lumps of white.

 

I had that in my back garden under where some Mypex membrane had covered the ground for a few years. Think I posted the image below on this forum back in May 2020, but got no ID. I assumed it was fungal mycelium.

It definitely wasn't there before I laid the Mypex, so nothing that's been dumped in the past as I previously used to regulary dig over that piece of ground for 20 years and there was never any sign of it then.

This is just a sample lump, there was loads of it in the top 100mm of soil.

 

I dug up a lot of hard white stuff at the bottom of his garden. We think it was the remains of a Lime pit. They used to make them to make cement many years ago. That stuff was fairly light weight too. When wet it turned to slime.

 

looks very much the same but mine in like a band of it 6 to 8 inches in thickness

 

i live in Runcorn known for chemicals, my house used to belong to ICI workers, the plant before it went but is a stones throw away, so maybe lime does not go slimy but just a bit softer and squidgy

 

extra it also goes right under my patio bricks dont know how far under tho

 

Any way you can test it @scott hones ? Eg by shaking some up in water and using pH paper, or adding some vinegar and seeing if it fizzes? (suggesting lime...)

 

didn't know that will try tonight thanks

 

just tried no fizzing so not lime

 

Can I see white strands coming from the lump in the picture?

 

We used to live in Runcorn too. On Halton Brow.