Kitchen Garden Forum

This is not exactly a gardening query, sorry! We found a fungus/mould growing on the inside of our wooden window frame, in the crack where the vertical wooden frame meets the horizontal wooden window sill.
The fungus was an irregularly-shaped solid, looking a bit like a smallish piece of liver! About 4" long and 1" tall, dark reddish-brown, covered in a very thin whitish film. All very dry. Brian cut it off, and it is solid with dusty brown stuff inside, rather the way I imagine a puffball would be, not having seen one.
The wood doesn't look at all damaged in any way. The window is very often open, so any sort of spore could have blown in.
Does this ring bells with anyone?? Or does anyone know of a useful place where we could see if we could identify it?
Alison.

Bore da, Alison

I tried a search, but was put off by the suggestion that there are probably 1.5 million species of fungus to check though.

Not a very helpful answer I'm afraid.

Alan

I have seen this before and assumed it was a sympton of the frame starting to rot. Regret I can't confirm it as I cut it off, painted over and sold the house (not for that reason I should add).

Bore da, Alan! Yes, I tried a search and got nowhere. It looks a bit like something called King Alfred's Cakes, but that is meant to have concentric rings inside when you cut it open, and this one is just dusty.
Thanks for the answers, anyway. We have cut it off, and will see if it resprouts. I have to say, I don't like it very much. It does have a bit of the Yuck factor!
Alison.

If it's "dusty" inside, that probably means its just mature, the "dust" is the spores - as in puffballs.

It sounds very like a fungus we had that on the inside of the house we bought 4yrs ago... it turned out to be dry rot.

I'd do a google for it and see if the fruiting body matches. Just in case it is....... the quicker it's caught the better it is..... cheaper to fix.

Is the window frame wet? The other sympton of dry rot is that when the wet woods starts to dry out you get cuboid cracking of the wood. It breaks with straight lines into cubes, we used to find bits of the window beading over the other side of the room.