Can anyone identify this? Thank you.
It is growing on wood, on a door inside a lean-to shed at the back of our house. The door was replaced in mid-2012, so the wood is in good condition. The shed sometimes has leaks, so the environment is usually dry but occasionally wet. There is lots of light from windows. This thing is about 2cm/1inch wide at the base. It has gradually been growing over the past 2-3 weeks. Once it is ID’d I plan to remove it, in case it is damaging the wood. Have never seen this before.
As you can hopefully see in the photo, it has a structure formed of spikes sticking out from the centre, each of which then has finer spikes coming off along the length. It has gradually spread over time.
I live in Portsmouth, UK – in the middle of a city, with a few miles from the sea.
