I guess most of us would shy away from buying antiques infested with a wood-destroying fungus - unless the agent of decay is this one. The green staining in this dead branch is caused by the green elf-cup fungus Chlorociboria aeruginascens (which used to be called Chlorosplenium aeruginascens) and the tinted wood was once used to make Tunbridge Ware - furniture inlaid with a patterned veneer of different coloured woods. According to John Ramsbottom in his Mushrooms and Toadstools (New Naturalist, 1953) the green pigmentation is produced by a fungal compound called xylindeine and Ramsbottom mentions that patents had been taken out on a process to produce attractive green wood by artificially inoculating it with the fungus, so that cabinet makers wouldn't need to forage for it in the woods. I wonder if the process was ever developed and commercialised? The fungus is very common and widespread on a variety of different trees, including oak, ash, beech, hazel and birch and the tinted wood is commonly known as 'green oak'. The fruiting bodies look like small, cup-shaped green scales on the surface of the rotting wood, but they aren't produced very often so are not easy o find.
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