The Fungus You Can Easily Start A Fire With

If you love camping or have been backpacking in the backcountry, then you know that building the perfect campfire is just as much an art form as a necessary survival skill — and there are a few important things you need to do it. This includes dry wood, twigs, kindling, some type of fire starter, and something to spark a flame. While firewood, twigs, and kindling can often be easily found around your campsite, many people choose to create their own trusty fire starters (like these weather-proof vaseline cotton balls). However, if you ever forget your fire starter or simply want to try something new, then there is a common fungus that you can easily use to start a fire — the chaga mushroom.

Chaga mushrooms are a type of parasitic fungus that grows on the sides of certain types of hardwood trees — especially birch trees — and forms a black lump (sometimes called a conk or a canker) that juts out of the tree's trunk. However, underneath this black canker is a spongy orange fungus that is considered to be a forest treasure by many mushroom hunters who use it to make medicinal teas and bushcraft experts who use the chaga mushroom's flammable qualities to create the perfect fire starter. Chaga is an especially good fire starter because it works like a piece of charcoal and will light easily, burn for a long time, and is quite stubborn and difficult to put out.

The first step in using chaga fungus as a fire starter is learning how to identify and find it. Chaga mushrooms typically grow on birch trees but can also be found growing on other hardwoods like beech, maple, rowan, ash, oak, willow, chestnut, and walnut. Chaga is a cold climate fungus and can be found mostly in the northern states in the U.S. This fungus tends to grow most abundantly in Maine and the mountains of North Carolina but can also be found in Canada and certain northern regions of Europe and Asia.

When searching for chaga, the most common mistake is to think that a regular tree burl is a chaga mushroom. However, tree burls are simply irregular knots that grow on the trunk of trees due to some type of environmental stressor. The biggest difference is that tree burls are part of the tree and are a lump made of wood and covered in bark. Cankers created by chaga mushrooms, on the other hand, will appear black on the outside almost like they are burnt. Furthermore, once you cut into the canker with a knife or ax, you will find an orange spongy fungus growing underneath. It is this orange part of the chaga mushroom that is highly flammable and makes a wonderful fire starter.

So, now that you've found your chaga fungus, it's time to make a fire with it. However, if you just harvested your chaga, it is likely a little too damp to use. In this case, you will need to set your foraged fungus out on a rock in the sunlight and let it dry out. Some of the smaller pieces may dry out in a few hours but others will take time.

Once the chaga is dry, you have two options, you can either use a knife to scrape off parts of it into a fine powder and then use a lighter, ferro rod, or flint and steel to throw a spark onto the pile of chaga powder (presumably as it sits on top of some type of kindling like paper or cardboard). The second option is to use a small piece of the chaga mushroom like a piece of charcoal and throw your spark directly onto the chunk of chaga until it lights and starts smoking. Once this happens, you can carefully move your fungus charcoal over to your kindling and get your fire going.

Because chaga is so flammable and can burn for such a long time, you will need to be very careful when discarding it or setting it aside (even if you think it didn't light) because it can be quite hard to put out. Also, while chaga mushroom can be used to create a medicinal tea, it is best to avoid consuming any mushroom or fungus in a survival situation for multiple safety reasons.