There was a wooden framed couch in my uncle's holiday cottage we visited as kids in the 80s He donated it to me and J when we moved into an unfurnished house in 2010. Already rickety.
In 2016 we bought a bigger couch, I sanded it all back, yacht varnished it, turned it into a garden couch. Bit dodgy though.
It's finally succumbing to the elements. But one of my favourite fungi, Fomes fomentarius, or the hoof fungus, has taken hold.
This is prized in some circles as once you dry it out it makes some of the best firelighting material in the world. Get it glowing and you can pack it away carefully, walk for 12 hours, unpack it and blow on it, and have another fire.
@_thegeoff what, the fungus?
@dillyd Yup, old school survival thing. It's very good at staying dry, and is easily fluffed up into a flammable felt-type thing. Plus, once the dense version is glowing, it'll keep glowing for a *long* time.
@_thegeoff what do you wrap it in while it's still in embers?
@dillyd Never done it myself (but have with damping a fire and relighting after 12hrs), so I believe it's possible. I'd go with something non-flammble, say green leaves, then a bunch of something insulating on top.
@_thegeoff @dillyd something like the portable smokers ashtray wallets maybe?
@avatastic @dillyd OK we all need you to expand on that?!
@_thegeoff @dillyd I'm sure I was gifted a smoker's travelling ashtray pouch once, maybe it was a gag gift??
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@_thegeoff
I have a couple of mushrooms that look like that on a dead birch in my backyard. I'll try to identify them. Maybe I've got some nice tinder right in my yard! If I cut them from the tree, I guess I can keep them quite a long time? They've been on the tree for years already. They don't decay or go away.
@dillyd It is, as far as I know, a long, slow growing fungi. And I believe the older ones work better. Worth a google before decimating old growth!
@_thegeoff
It's an old dead tree in my own yard. One trunk already fell, the other is wobbly.
@dillyd Fun fact: if fungi didn't exist, neither would we, we'd all be under a few km of dead trees. Fungi are one of the few things that process dead trees. (Or, yeah, obviously termites would rule the world.)
@_thegeoff
Fungi are very cool. As I understand, coal is the result of trees dying before there were fungus around to decompose them.
@dillyd I'm not entirely sure on that process, but that's interesting. I do like the idea of oilbeing mostly algae, very little dinosaur. Also have an algae tank on the go which petrochemical industry is allowed nowhere near.
How Fungi’s Evolutionary Delay Gave Us Fossil Fuels

We often think of fossil fuels — coal, oil, and natural gas — as the ancient remains of dead organisms. But the full story is stranger and…

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