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From - Disgusting but interesting facts:
"Well, at least you always have it with you"
"The Vikings used their own urine to start fires. They would boil touchwood, a tree fungus, with their own urine for a few days. The sodium nitrate from the urine combined with the touchwood produced a highly combustible substance that came in handy when they were raiding.""
^Can't find anything about this tree fungus colloquially called (common name?) "Touch-wood/Touchtood", is this a misspelling for something else? I think, maybe they used 'Torch-wood', to boil their urine and scald their enemies and someone just assumed it was a fungus? Can't evacuate with morning wood so the urinary name goes out the door there, you have to touch it to aim though. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 66.96.79.217 (talk) 22:33, 16 December 2017 (UTC)
- I think you're talking about two different things. Horse-hoof (false tinder fungus, tinder fungus, Fomes fomentarius) fungus may have been cut up and boiled in urine to make a fire starter, but that's a different fungus that grows on trees.
- I am unsure of the type or types of fungus that grow inside of dead or dying trees that transform sound wood into "punkwood". Please see the new section of the talk page I added below. 173.120.168.43 (talk) 19:49, 7 August 2019 (UTC)
touchwood = punkwood (which doesn't have a wikipedia entry, but is briefly discussed under "tinder"
editpunkwood or "punk wood", is briefly described in the Tinder article.
Both punkwood or touchwood are partly decayed dead wood. The wood is lightweight and is usually found in a state where it can be squeezed and described as "spongy".
Historically, it was called "touchwood" but "punkwood" is the more modern term. When dried out, one could "touch" an ember to it and it would act as a "coal extender", slowly smothering along like a fireworks lighting "punk"
Canadian explorer [Samuel Hearne] uses the term three times in his journal.
http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/38404 173.120.168.43 (talk) 19:39, 7 August 2019 (UTC)