A Scouting Trip.

Last weekend my wife and I had to go scouting for wood. Being a forest and not woodland the trees are fairly close together so we had to find a route where by we could get the wagon in. We could have gone up the flats in the bottom of the valley, but there is a header stream that runs through this valley and the ground is soft and easily damaged.
We cut our way through to each fire wood source as we went, and occasionally stopped to take in the view and see what we could find. These images are from that fire wood scouting trip.

Ryvardenia Cretacea, a bracket fungi used as tinder. This one on a Stringybark Tree.

On the ground beneath the same tree we found another bracket fungi from last year which had fallen from the tree.

Two more bracket fungi growing on a Mountain Gum.

In the cleft in this Stringybark Tree, center of photo, is a bees nest.

A section of bark has been removed from this tree with an iron axe. Possibly to make a shelter or a cover for something.

There are three scars around this tree where it looks as though it has been cut with a stone axe, taking off two sections of bark. The third cut is quite high, so someone would have had to climb this tree to remove this bark.

Fire lighting & Tinder Quotes.

Their grow’s here Large Berch trees…on the Root of the branches of the Said tree, grows Large Knobs of wood of Different form’s, which they style posogan, which posogan is of great service to the Natives, they use it to strike Light to, as we do touch wood… its Substance Resembles Spunge…once Light is Very Difficult to put out…will Glow and Bur’n till Consum’d to ashes and never Blaze.”
~James Isham, Hudson’s Bay, 1743-49

“They employ tree mushrooms very frequently instead of tinder. Those which are taken from the sugar maple are reckoned the best; those of the red maple are next in goodness, and next to them, those of the sugar birch, for want of these, they likewise make use of those which grow on the aspen tree.”
~ Peter Kalm, Canada, 1749

"Maple trees usually have large growths on them, which are cut and dried in the sun, making a sort of touchwood which the Canadians call tondre."
Jolicoeur Charles Bonin,
Memoir of French and Indian War Soldier, 1750's

“…fungus that grows on the outside of the birch-tree…used by all the Indians in those parts for tinder…called by the Northern Indians Jolt-thee, and is known all over the country bordering on Hudson’s Bay by the name of Pesogan…there is another kind…that I think is infinitely preferable to either. This is found in old decayed poplars, and lies in flakes…is always moist when taken from the tree but when dry…takes fire readily from the spark of a steel: but it is much improved by being kept dry in a bag that has contained gunpowder.”
~Samuel Hearne, Northern Canada, 1772

“I said to them…you Fools go to the Birch Trees and get some touchwood,”
~David Thompson, Lake Athabasca, 1790s

“This induced me to resolve not to travel more by land without my gun, powder and shot, steel, spunge and flint, for striking a fire…”
~Patrick Campbell, Canada/New York, 1792

“A Canadian never neglects to have touchwood for his pipe”
~David Thompson, Red Lake River, 1798

A Good Fungus Post at Australian Fungi.

http://australianfungi.blogspot.com/2011/02/50-podaxis-pistillaris.html

Period Foods. Tall Trees & Mushrooms Blog.

A great post on the Polyporus mylittae.

http://morrie2.wordpress.com/2011/02/04/polyporus-mylittae-an-ancient-edible/#comment-49