Identifying the Thistle for use as tinder.

Description

In this Video I look at the thistle plant, how to identify it and its usefulness as tinder.

Tags: Bushcraft,survival,ray mears,bear grylls,camping,how to,Thistle (Ingredient),Tinder,fire,outdoors,wild camping,self reliance,prepping,hiking,Survival Skills (TV Genre),Summer,botany

Video Transcription

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hi guys what I've got for you today is a little bit of plant idea today I'm gonna be having a really quick look at the common thistle ok so this is it here this stuff's a bit kind of dead it's on its way out it's the time of year for it to be on its way out again I've chosen this time of year because this planet started to and see you at this time of year dead easy to identify it's got these really big spiky leaves ok the spikes the spines on these incredibly sharp ok so you know some wearing gloves to do this so even when yeah even when it's dead and dying and drying out this these spikes retain the spike in us so they'll be aware of that work gloves long sleeves and stuff we appropriate for doing this all the reason why look at this point is it's another plan which is excellent for collecting tinder prompt unfortunately the stuff on these ones here I've chosen to show you RM don't have much in the way of natural timber lit but there's some more juice SS will move the camera minute have a look at that but I picked these to show you the kind of size that they can grow up saliste these plants can go really really huge again they grow pretty much everywhere like wasteland scrubland generally i'm just going to react or a camera a little bit for you you can note you'll see that all over the place here they're stinging nettles ok so this plant grows quick pretty commonly and it tends to grow alongside stinging nettles really big reach off it's actually pretty difficult to pull this stuff off i use a user if whatever is I need to post more that I tend to use an April secateurs on it book to be honest the main use of this plant is that it makes excellent tinder from the seed heads the large spines on it can be quite useful so they can make a pretty big supreet talk especially when tried get some like the gloves without injury myself out out me not the spines on this grow grow pretty big I mean you can see the size i put pretty blurry on the calendar but these make a really good little sewing needles but for soft fabrics if you get really stuck and they're also quite useful for making things like a like fish hooks and stuff but not the best spines for making things like this because they are quite soft and a little bit bendy but in a tight situation is I useful so what we'll do now is I'm just going to quickly move the camera over to another section unfortunate work going on so I apologize for that and but what I'll show you the seed heads and the usefulness of our tinder okay so here's another set of these plants this one's going on the edge of this kind of little bit of scrubland here but you can see really clearly the seed heads here are really fluffy they're almost like dandelion heads and you can actually get a surprising amount of tinder out of this stuff so go really quickly I'm not going to take it out because it gets like flash tinder it burns up really quickly it's not the best tinder in the world but does work so I'm just going to quickly show you how easy this stuff takes using just the clicky later there you go instant flames okay I put that out now I'm going to collect some of this up because I'm going to be doing a video today on natural Tinder's I'm not sure when that will be released I'm also I believe earlier in the year these these thistle heads are actually edible again I've never tried it but if people are interested in seeing that I will look into myself and I'll give it a go 140 that will be a little bit later in the year for you so as always thank you all for watching I hope this has been helpful for you and please leave any comments and whatnot of stuff you'd like to see cheers guys