Harmless🔥 Fire
🍄 Hoof fungus
Fomes fomentarius · Fungi (Polyporaceae)
🧠 To remember it"Horse hoof on the birch tree, an ember sleeps beneath its skin" — its massive bracket silhouette signals the most reliable fire resource in the boreal forest from a distance.
🔍 Identify it without mistakes
Perennial wood-decay fungus (not a plant), forming massive shelf-like, horse-hoof-shaped fruiting bodies on the trunks of hardwood trees, especially weakened or dead birches and beeches. Grey to brownish-black surface zoned with concentric ridges, reddish-brown, fibrous, and felted inner flesh (this inner layer yields amadou once processed).
- massive shelf-like fruiting body shaped like a horse hoof
- surface zoned with concentric grey to brownish-black ridges
- reddish-brown, fibrous, and felted inner flesh
- grows on trunks of weakened or dead birches and beeches
Size10-40 cm wide
Floweringperennial, visible year-round, slow growth over several years
Habitattrunks of weakened or dead hardwoods (especially birch), temperate and boreal forests across the northern hemisphere
🪓 Other bushcraft uses
- amadou: sliced, pounded, and sometimes nitrated felted inner layer catches sparks from a flint-and-steel lighter and smolders slowly into an ember — a fire-starting technique used since prehistoric times (Ötzi, the 5,300-year-old ice mummy, was carrying some)
- traditional medicinal use as a styptic bandage (blood-clotting properties), sold in European pharmacies up until the 20th century as strips
- handcrafted hats and accessories tanned from the felted flesh ("mushroom leather", a craft still practiced in Romania and Transylvania)
Sources (3)
No entry replaces a certain identification in the field, or medical advice. When in doubt: don't eat it. If ingestion is suspected: poison control or 112/911.