King Alfred's Cakes

King Alfred's Cakes, Daldinia concentrica.  Cross section.  Beckenham Place Park, 16 October 2016

The story goes that when King Alfred was in hiding, he was offered a place to stay by an old woman who asked him to watch her cakes as they cooked.  Lost in thoughts of his own strategy, he did not concentrate on that too-simple task and the cakes burned.

King Alfred's Cakes, Daldinia concentrica, on Silver Birch.  Beckenham Place Park, 7 December 2013.

These brown blobs are a fungus named after that story.  They start out brown, and later turn black.

They are crisp and brittle, and a knife goes through them with a pleasing crunch, exposing an interior consisting of concentric spheres - hence the species name.

King Alfred's Cakes, Daldinia concentrica.  Cross section.  Beckenham Place Park, 16 October 2016

It is said that they make good tinder, and can be used as hand warmers.  Well, I thought I would investigate this.  I brought a few chunks home from Petts Wood (they are very common) and put the on my metal balcony.  (NO LIGHTING FIRES IN THE WOODS!)

King Alfred's Cakes, Daldinia concentrica, on the back balcony of my house in Hayes, 19 November 2016.

They are very light.  The biggest piece here is 5 cm across and weighs about 4½ grammes.

It turns out that they can be lit easily, using a lighter or a match.  (I tried both.)  An experienced woodsman should be able to get them going with a spark from flint and steel.  They smoulder, with no flame, and they are persistent; they don't go out even if they start with just a tiny red dot, like the top piece in the photo below, which I lit at the very tip.

King Alfred's Cakes, Daldinia concentrica, burning on the back balcony of my house in Hayes, 19 November 2016.

These are the two pieces on the left in the previous photo.  When a breeze blew over them, they glowed.  I let them go for about 10 minutes and then put them out with water.  They lasted long enough and burned hot enough that they could easily have have been used to ignite some dry twigs.

They gave off a very pungent smoke which I could still smell on my clothes a few hours later.  I would not want to hold one in my hand as a warmer, it would be too likely to burn me, but their use as tinder is definitely a goer.

p.s. They appear almost always on dead Ash.  But I read that their DNA can be found in almost all trees, they just don't fruit on most of them. The top photo, showing some on Silver Birch, is quite unusual.