Previous expeditions to the Himalayas (Singh 1993, 1994) have reported on the presence in this area of the dry rot fungus Serpula lacrymans. However, attempts to isolate the organism from material brought back from these expeditions were not successful. In this paper we report on the isolation of Serpula lacrymans from spores and cord material brought back from the Narkanda region of the Himalayas. Whilst morphological analysis suggested the nature of the material as being Serpula lacrymans confirmation of this has been via protein fingerprint studies using SDS-PAGE. In this paper the natural habitat of the dry rot fungus will be discussed and compared with the building environment in which the organism grows in Europe, Japan, etc. In addition information on a range of other assowiated fungal species, also isolated from the Himalayan forest, will be given.

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