Spalted birch

By pure chance I sawed up an old rotting ring of birch trunk to put it through the chipper at work. Inside on the freshly-cut surfaces was a beautiful spalting pattern - I've seen it on beech before, and even have a lovely spalted-beech bowl turned by my partner's papa, but never seen it on birch before. There was honey fungus bootlaces all over it, but perhaps other fungi have been attacking it too? Either way, the battle between fungus (fungi?) and tree have been beautifully documented, with the tree laying down its defence system by biochemically altering the wood, and the fungus eventually overcoming it and forcing the tree to draw new battleground lines. OK, a slightly anthropological view, but that's roughly what has happened.