Identifying & using Cramp balls (Daldinia Concentrica)

Description

In this Video Fozz from Forrester Bushcraft shows how to find & identify The Daldinia concentrica Fungi. This fungi grows predominantly on dead Ash trees, however can ocasionaly be found growing on beech. Once dried this fungi can then be used to take a spark and start a fire, giving you an instant 'coal' or ember as the heart of a young fire.

Tags: Bushcraft,survival,ray mears,bear grylls,camping,how to,Daldinia Concentrica (Organism Classification),Survival Skills (TV Genre),tinder,mythology,foraging,fire,SHTF,prepping,finding,locating,mushroom,fungi,ash,beech,forests,wilderness

Video Transcription

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alright guys so I've been out wandering the woods and I have handily come across this little mushroom which is what I'm going to talk about today's little fungi here this is called Albania concentric a really really had a little tinder fungus so I'm going to get a piece of this re Angela camera and we'll have a little bit of talk about it so this is balvenie a concentric ax which grows predominantly on falling ash trees and it can occasionally grow on beech trees and I actually think that this is a piece of beechwood it's quite hard to talk to mostly barks of it but there are some beech trees in the area and there are no ash tree so I am presuming that this is a piece of beach now w concentric it is its latin name however it has a couple of common names as well the first of these are quite a common one is it's called a cramp ball because way back when this was used somehow I'm not sure how and but it was used to alleviate cramps the other name which is what I prefer to use is King Alfred's cakes now the reason I prefer to use this name is because there's a little myth which goes with it which makes it easy to identify this mushroom a fungi pardon me I mean it's pretty easy to identify any way but it's quite cool to have a little story so the story of King Alfred is am I believe I think he was a an anglo-saxon King who was fighting some war somewhere and he went off to seek a bit of a praetor to think straight and he family the home of this old lady and asked if he could spend the night there and and have a think about his war tactics and she said yes that's fine but I need to go out so i went to keep an eye on your kit on these cakes that i'm cooking and that's the price of your staying here anyway King Alfred says yep that's fine she goes off he sits down and starts thinking he's thinking about this war strategy and what he's going to do is a big think of this King Alfred anyway he forgets all about the cakes and burns them it comes back and this old lady beats up this king quite amusing story but the call King Alfred's cakes because they look like these little burnt cakes and that's quite a good little story because there's a tinder fungus or the use for like a fire fires are good for cooking so that's your cakes and also they look burnt so fire burn and they look like little cakes quite a few little things in there but to make it easy to remember what these things look like so I'm going to take one of these off here now and we'll have a look at using this as a tinder I have got a dr one with me so i spotted these then dash back to the car when my bag is and pick to drywall up that keeping my little tinderbox so i'll take one of these off and we'll have a bit of a look at it that's prior to get off get the knife on it it's quite big quite professional up the tech level tech split off there we go up beautiful beautiful one that broke that one still be used then a some just over here as well what's up take example so the cold allodynia concentric a concentric another easy way to remember how identify this mushroom consents occur because it has concentric circles on the inside just like the circles you can find a sigh a tree so this is what it looks like again cameras probably not gonna pick that up but you can clearly see the concentric circles inside this now you can't use this straight up as a tinder it needs to be dried this is quite fresh damp inside that ain't going to take a spark because it's damp it's just going to take that spark out I do however have a dry one in my pocket so well just not as my shirt as a double pocket didn't know that it's one Ferro rod would I put it got the two pockets getting confused so this is the dry when you cut me clearly see the difference between what they look like when the dry this one actually looks like this was quite dense this one's a very very lightweight it actually looks like a bit of old charcoal so let's have a look at getting a spark into this so here's my little dry bit of Darby Nia we're very carefully chop this off I don't you use the whole thing so it would be a waste good shot a little bit of that off the waste is there not too much to worry about that to one side just for them so what going to do is I'm not going to try and throw a spark directly into this so use one nail really carefully just for thought so there's a lot of fibers on the inside it's very very dusty ok oops having none of it

go I throw a bit of a spark into that now okay so that's taken so just show you this on the camera you can see it that's molding away really nicely just the spark a little bit of a below it gets really really hot so you pop that in your tinder bundle oh really harshly so you pop that into your tinder bundle get yourself a good fire going you see it smoke a little bit as well hopefully you can see that really really good stuff camera readers a lot of folks right now I'm afraid you can see and it's really really hot it's kind of a nice smell actually it's kind of quite an akron quite pungent smell but I kind of like yet another something something nice about that smell so this is smaller birds quite a while so you see you get a deep easy easy and Barack this is a cotton instant coal basically which is why I love this stuff absolutely brilliant still going so there you go but supposedly now I've never actually tried this but this also will work effectively as a bug repellent instead of the mosquito coil kind of things that you get so they go guys that said Albania concentric

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