I recently moved into a new home and started my lawn from scratch. My fescue has grown in pretty well over the start of spring, but recently noticed a wet spot in a perfect circle in a section of my lawn. It’s about 10” in diameter. I did some research and thought maybe this was a “grease spot” or Pythium Blight. To confirm this wasn’t some sort of pipe leak, I dug about 10 inches into the ground, where I found what appears to be either a tree root or a trimmed vine about 1.5” diameter (which i assume was buried when they flattened the back yard after construction). After digging around the root/vine and inspecting it, it appears to be rotting, and excreting some type of liquid, which has an oily texture and turns the grass and other plants that fall into it black (it’s kinda creepy)
If my assumption is correct and it’s a vine that was trimmed off a nearby tree, I’ll just dig it up and repair my grass.
Otherwise, if I go to pull it out and it ends up being a tree root, is it okay to cut the rotting portion out of the ground? The nearest tree is about 30ft away, which is a very small tree so it wouldn’t make sense for it to have a root of this size. Otherwise I have a huge sweet gum all tree in my yard that’s about 60ft away from it, not sure if it could be a root to that tree.
