Tinder Fungus & Amadou: Finding, Processing and Using Horse Hoof Fungus for Fire

What is the tinder fungus?

The tinder fungus is a perennial bracket fungus. It lives in the wood of weakened or dead broadleaved trees, above all beech and birch, and forms woody fruiting bodies on the trunk that grow a little every year. The shape gives it its other common names: horse hoof fungus, hoof fungus, tinder conk or tinder polypore. In Britain it is common on birch in Scotland and the north and has been spreading on beech further south; across Central and Northern Europe, and in North America, it is one of the most frequent large brackets on dead beech and birch.

The fungus is a decomposer. It causes white rot, softens the trunk and eventually brings it down; the brackets then keep growing on the fallen log for years. A trunk covered in hoof fungi is therefore almost always dead or dying, which matters for harvesting: you do not need to touch a healthy tree to find it.

A very old fire material

Before matches, people made fire with sparks, and sparks need something that will glow from a tiny point of heat. Prepared tinder fungus was that material across much of Europe for a very long time. The best-known example is the Iceman, the Copper Age mummy found in the Ötztal Alps in 1991: he is commonly reported to have carried pieces of tinder fungus in his belt pouch, together with traces of pyrite, which researchers interpret as a fire-making kit. In later centuries amadou was produced as a trade good and sold alongside steels and flints; the word "tinder" in the fungus's name is meant literally.

Amadou also had other craft uses: it was made into felt-like caps and bags in parts of Eastern Europe, and fly fishers still use small patches to dry their flies. Those uses share the property that matters for fire: a soft, absorbent, fibrous felt.

Identifying tinder fungus for fire use

For fire craft you need to answer one practical question: does this bracket contain a thick, soft, brown layer that will smoulder? The features below are the ones that matter for that. They are not a full mycological identification, and they do not need to be: if you pick a look-alike, the worst that happens is poor tinder.

• Shape: like a horse's hoof stuck to the trunk, taller towards the tree, with a flat underside. Young brackets are rounder, old ones stack several growth bulges on top of each other.
• Crust: hard, dull, pale to dark grey, with concentric bands and furrows that follow the rim. The newest zone at the lower edge is often brownish or ochre.
• Underside: a flat, fine-pored surface, cream-grey to brown, which darkens where you press or scratch it.
• Hardness: the whole bracket feels like wood. You cannot dent it with a thumb, and it does not bend.
• Host: beech or birch in most regions, less often other broadleaved trees. If you are unsure about the tree, our guide to identifying trees and their wood helps.
• Inside: under a crust only a millimetre or two thick lies cinnamon-brown, suede-like felt. This is the decisive feature, and you see it as soon as you cut.

Look-alikes that matter for tinder

Several other brackets grow on the same trees. None of them is a problem for fire lighting, but most of them simply do not work as well, so it saves time to tell them apart before you cut.

If the cut shows white or cream flesh, or dark material that is hard all the way through, you are holding something else. Leave it, and do not cut a second and third bracket to make sure; look for the grey hoof on the next dead beech instead.

Inside the bracket: crust, trama and tubes

A tinder fungus consists of three parts that behave very differently, and only one of them is good tinder. Knowing where each one lies tells you where to cut.

At the point where the bracket is attached to the tree there is also a pale, marbled, crumbly core. It is not the trama and does not make felt, though dry crumbs of it will glow.

The practical consequence: large, old brackets are not automatically better. What you want is a bracket with a thick trama, and that is something you only see after the first cut. Medium-sized, well-developed hoofs often give more usable felt for their size than huge, flat ones that consist almost entirely of tubes.

Harvesting tinder fungus responsibly

Bracket fungi are not just growths on a dead tree. Their fruiting bodies are home to specialised beetles, moths and flies, some of them rare, and the dead wood they sit on is among the most valuable habitats in a forest. A single bracket yields enough tinder for many fires, so there is no reason to take more than one.

Old and dry or fresh?

A fresh, actively growing bracket is heavy with water. It is easier to cut, and its trama is supple, which is an advantage if you plan to make amadou straight away. It then needs days to dry. An old bracket that has been dead for a while is lighter, harder to cut and often dry enough inside that the field method works the same day. Very old brackets riddled with insect holes crumble and contain little usable felt; leave them for the insects that are living in them.

How to remove it

Old brackets on rotten wood often come off with a firm push of the hand from above. A stuck one can be freed with a few strokes of a folding saw along the trunk. Do not hammer at it with the back of an axe near your hands, and do not lever with the tip of your knife; that is how tips break. Standing dead trees shed branches without warning, so look up before you step under one, and never try to push over a dead trunk to reach a bracket.

Horse hoof fungus fire: the simple field method

The quickest way from bracket to ember needs no pot and no ash, only a knife and dry weather. You cut out the trama, dry it thoroughly and scrape it into fluff. The result is less sensitive than true amadou, but it catches the hot sparks of a ferro rod readily and is all you need to extend an ember from a bow drill or a dying fire.

The knife work is the risky part. A tinder fungus is as hard as seasoned wood on the outside and rounded, so the blade wants to skate off. Work on a stable surface, not on your knee, and keep the cuts thin. A sharp edge is safer than a dull one here because it bites instead of slipping; see how to sharpen a knife if yours needs attention.

How to make amadou: the traditional method

Amadou is trama that has been turned into a thin, soft felt. The traditional process has three aims: to wash out substances that hinder smouldering, to break up the dense fibre so that it becomes loose and fuzzy, and to increase the surface that a spark can land on. Old recipes differ in the details, and there is no single correct method. What they share is soaking or boiling, pounding, stretching and drying.

Water, wood ash and other recipes

Plain water already softens the trama enough to pound it. Many traditional recipes add sieved wood ash to the water, which makes a weak lye; the alkaline solution is said to open up the fibres further and to leave salts in the felt that help it keep glowing. Historical sources also mention soaking the finished felt in a solution of saltpetre. That is not needed for a working spark catcher and is not recommended here: well-made amadou from water or ash water is entirely sufficient.

Recipes also disagree on time. Some simmer the slices for well under an hour, others soak them for days. As a rough starting point, about an hour of gentle simmering softens 5 mm slices thoroughly; judge by feel rather than by the clock. The slices are ready when they are evenly dark, swollen and pliable like wet leather.

What good amadou looks and feels like

Finished amadou is light, tan to cinnamon brown, a millimetre or two thick and flexible like soft leather or thick felt. You can fold it without cracking it, and the surface looks slightly woolly. If it is stiff and board-like, it was not pounded enough or dried without being worked; dampen it and knead it again.

Optional: charring amadou

Amadou and plain dry trama can be charred exactly like cotton: packed loosely in a closed tin with a small vent hole and heated on coals until the smoke stops, then cooled closed. The method is described in full in how to make char cloth. Charred fungus takes even the weakest spark at once, like char cloth, and still smoulders longer than cloth. It is more fragile than uncharred amadou, so many people char only a few small pieces and keep the rest as felt.

Raw, scraped, amadou or charred: which form catches which spark?

This is where expectations and reality most often part ways. "Tinder fungus catches a spark" is true, but it depends heavily on the form of the material and on the kind of spark.

The sparks from flint and a steel striker are small and comparatively cool. Untreated trama usually does not catch them from a smooth cut face; it has to be very dry and scraped to a fine fluff before it has a chance, and even then it is unreliable. Well-made, fuzzy amadou takes those sparks properly, and charred material takes them easily. A ferro rod is a different matter: its sparks are far hotter and more numerous, and dry, fluffed trama catches them readily. Whatever the form, once the fungus glows it keeps glowing for a long time, and that is its real strength.

How does that compare with other spark catchers? Char cloth is easier to light than uncharred amadou and can be made in minutes, but a small square burns out in about a minute and it falls apart in a damp pocket. Amadou is tougher, glows much longer, and a piece that has been snuffed out can be lit again. If you strike with flint and steel and want certainty, carry both: a few squares of char cloth to catch the spark, and fungus to keep the ember alive.

Amadou fire starting: from spark to flame

Fungus gives you an ember, and an ember is not yet a fire. Before you strike a single spark, build the rest: a tinder nest of about two fists of fine, dry fibre, pencil-thin kindling, thicker fuel, and a fire lay ready to receive the burning bundle. Our guides to starting a fire and fire lays cover that part, and the fire lay picker suggests a lay for your weather.

What to look for

• The dot spreads by itself. A spark that lands and dies within a second means damp or too dense material. Dry it and fluff it more.
• Thin blue-grey smoke with a faintly sweet, smoky smell shows that the fungus is glowing properly.
• Contact matters. The ember must touch fine fibres. Press the nest gently around it; an ember lying in a hollow with air all round will glow for minutes and light nothing.
• The nest must be finer than you think. A fungus ember is not very hot. Dry grass rubbed soft, shredded inner bark or the fibres left from making natural cordage work; coarse leaves do not.

Once the bundle burns, the usual rules apply: thin, dry kindling first, for example feather sticks, then thicker wood. The firewood calculator tells you how much to gather before you start.

Carrying an ember and extending a coal

The property that made tinder fungus famous is not that it lights easily. It is that it smoulders slowly, evenly and persistently without bursting into flame. That makes it useful in two ways: as a coal extender, and as a way to take fire from one place to another.

As a coal extender

The dust ember from a bow drill, a glowing scrap of char cloth or the last coal in a dying fire are all small and short-lived. Press a piece of dry trama or a chip of the tube layer against them and blow gently: the glow moves into the fungus, and you now have a robust ember that gives you minutes instead of seconds to prepare a better nest. This works with the raw, untreated material; no boiling is needed for it.

Carrying fire

A larger piece, or a whole dry bracket lit at one edge, keeps smouldering for a long time. How long cannot be stated honestly as a number: it depends on the size and density of the piece, how dry it is and how much air it gets. As a very rough orientation, a thumb-sized piece glows for minutes rather than seconds, and a large dry piece with restricted air can last for hours. Test your own material before you rely on it.

Chaga tinder, cramp balls and other fungi for fire

The tinder fungus is the classic, but it is not the only fungus that holds an ember. Two others are worth knowing, again strictly as fire materials.

Chaga, the "true tinder conk"

Chaga (Inonotus obliquus) is not a bracket at all but a black, cracked, charcoal-like mass that bulges out of the trunk of living birches in cold regions. Inside it is rusty orange-brown and corky. Dried thoroughly and scraped or crumbled fine, that inner material can take a spark directly, which is why it is known as true tinder conk in North America; charred, it is far more reliable. It also smoulders long and makes a good coal extender. Because it grows on living trees, removing it wounds the tree, and it has been heavily over-collected in some areas: take none from living trees without clear permission, and prefer pieces from fallen birch.

Cramp balls or King Alfred's cakes

In Britain and Ireland the best-known ember carrier is Daldinia concentrica, called cramp balls or King Alfred's cakes: hard, black, rounded lumps a few centimetres across, mostly on dead ash. Broken open, they show silvery-grey and black concentric rings. Only old, dry, black, lightweight ones are useful; brown or heavy ones are still fresh. A dry one takes a spark from a ferro rod on its broken inner face and then glows slowly through its layers like a charcoal briquette, with a sharp smell. It is an ember carrier and extender, not a flame maker.

Soft, rotten "punk" wood belongs in the same family of materials even though it is wood, not fungus: charred in a tin, it catches sparks like char cloth. It is described together with other natural tinders.

Storing tinder fungus and amadou

Dry fungus draws moisture from the air, and damp fungus will not take a spark. Storage is therefore simple but not optional.

• Dry it fully first. Trama or amadou packed away while still slightly damp goes mouldy. Give it several days in a dry, airy place before it goes into a container.
• Airtight on the trail. A small tin inside a zip bag keeps amadou dry and uncrushed. Charred pieces get their own tin because they shed black dust.
• Breathable at home. For long storage, a paper bag or cloth pouch in a dry room is better than sealed plastic, where residual moisture cannot escape.
• Check for insects. Brackets often contain beetle larvae. Processing removes most of them; storing whole brackets indoors can bring them into the house. Process a bracket soon rather than keeping it on a shelf.
• Refresh before use. A few hours in an inside pocket or on a warm stone drive off the damp it has picked up. Rough up the surface again before you strike.

Kept dry, amadou lasts for years. A strip the size of two fingers is enough for many fires because you use only a small piece each time and can snuff out the rest. Add it to the fire kit on your bushcraft kit list or in the Kit Builder, next to a lighter and a ferro rod.

Troubleshooting: when the fungus will not catch

Most failures come down to moisture, density or the wrong part of the bracket. The table sorts the common problems by what you observe.

Safety: knife, lye and live embers

Working with tinder fungus combines three hazards. Each is easy to control if you respect it.

Knife work on a hard, round object

• Put the bracket on a block or log, flat side down. Never hold it in your palm or brace it on your thigh while you cut.
• Cut away from the holding hand and away from your body, in thin, shallow passes. Forcing a deep cut through the crust is how the blade slips.
• Keep a clear space around you and sit or kneel stably. The basic grips and the safety triangle are explained in carving basics.
• Use a sturdy fixed blade and keep it sharp; advice on choosing one is in bushcraft knives. If the crust defeats the knife, use a saw. Carrying rules for knives differ by country; see knife laws.
• Have a dressing within reach. Our first aid kit guide covers cuts.

Hot ash water

Treat the pot of ash water as what it is: a hot, caustic liquid. Gloves, eye protection, a stable pot on a stable fire or stove, and nobody small nearby. Do not use your cooking pot, and do not tip the liquid into a watercourse.

Embers and fire rules

Smouldering fungus is live fire. Test pieces, leftovers and anything you have carried must be extinguished completely: drown them in water and crush them until they are cold to the touch, because a piece that only looks dead can glow on inside. Never drop one on the forest floor.

Fire bans and seasonal restrictions apply to embers, test sparks into tinder and charring tins just as they do to campfires. Rules vary by country and region; check the current fire danger level, use established fireplaces and read campfire safety and Leave No Trace before you light anything. With children, an adult does the cutting and handles the ember; ideas for suitable tasks are in bushcraft with kids.

More fire skills are collected in the fire hub.