Mature cattail heads catch the slightest spark when you fluff them up. Including the spark from a dead Bic (no butane left) found on the road. I haven't tried them in rain, but they're packed so densely that they probably shed most of the water. They're the finest tinder you can get up here, and the heads are somewhat intact through the fall and winter.

Re pine stump: what specifically do you do to get relatively dry tinder?

You get the pitch wood.

An easy route to see what I mean is find an old one but not decaying and hit it with the pointy side of a pick axe. It should split and you can pull out slivers from 1/4" to probably 1/2" that stuff will light like a candle and burn a good amount of time too... you can also sliver it up and make lil tinder flakes for taking a spark too.

Even in rain on the BC coast I was able to find tinder under outcrops of rock and on the dry sides of cedar trees.
It does not need to be much of an overhang to keep something out of the rain.
Cedar bark usually is dry on the side of the tree and can be shredded enough to catch a spark.

I have also found that grasses can usually be found either growing against something or under a tree sheltered enough to be dry.

I have raided rodent nests for tinder just to see if it worked, and it did. Mice and squirrels shred the tinder for you.

Doug mentioned cat tail heads and that stuff catches like gasoline.
Thistle down is good too.

Some of the lichens can be used, like Usnea species, but I never had much luck with them when it was wet out.

I have had a harder time finding tinder when it is fog and dew than just rain. I am usually looking for stuff sheltered from the rain when I am looking for tinder and foggy dew goes everywhere.

one of the problems with finding tinder in the wet woods is that you become wet looking for it.really--pushing thru the brush or among the trees to find a place sheltered enough to come up with the amount of dry tinder you would need to start a fire,let alone fire wood,is something you better be doing in a full rain suit.in my neck of the woods,Northern Minnesota,i can look around for a minute--yes minute--and come up with a pile of Birch bark that would cook a moose or find nothing but moss covered rotten Aspen.i have made many,many fires on wet days and all that Scout handbook,survival manual advice on looking for mouse nests or under a leaf is for the birds,which is why i always take a fire starter of some/many types.

Lint.

If you're wearing anything cotton - denim, socks, etc. just take out the old trusty pocket knife and start shaving away.

Also, hair can work in a pinch.

If you don’t carry it with you, in general, look up. It is best if you can practice looking for dry material when you don’t need it, so when you do need it you can avoid traipsing around getting wet trying to find DRY tinder!

Look up the side of a large tree, often you can find some dry sections of the tree that may have moss and bark that can be shaved for tinder. Flake off a bit of the outer layer of the bark to get to some dry stuff under it. Then you can look in the shelter of the same tree on the ground. Move stuff around, lift a layer of the material under a tree, or a rock under the same tree. My faves are pine and fir…sometimes the duff will stay dry all year.

Look under the cut-bank of a creek. If there is a good overhang you can often find lots of dry material under there. Moss, leaves, small sticks and lots of dead dry roots (very fine) that all burn well.

+1 on the mature cattails. Love those things. You would be surprised how long they stay dry, even in the wettest weather. You can actually often times see the water bead up on them. (In December in north Idaho, me and a buddy shook about 4 of them loose over a cattle pond. it was raining lightly at the time, and with 1 spark from a bic the whole thing burned across the entire pond in a beautiful wave that lasted about 2 seconds. What a blast of heat! You need to re-pack then together again if you want to actually start a fire rather than a slow explosion.)

Mullein plant. Even well into winter you can often find dry material in a patch of mullein. If it all seems to be wet (don’t forget to check the base) split it open and check the center. Not to mention you would be doing everyone a favor by destroying it

Birch trees. Of course you can peel off some birch park and usually find something dry enough to scrape/shred into tender

Cut/damaged trees +1 for sap. Granted, getting it to light by spark is not easy, but MAN, DOES IT BURN! Examine the injury and see if you can pull off some small bits of dry wood in that area, if it is soaked with sap all the better if you can shave it and it will act like “fatwood”

Pull the bark off a downed tree…inspect all the way around the tree for dry material.

Clumps of grass. Dig down deep, see if you can find something dry.

Treat large Sage /antelope/bitter brush plants like trees. their bark will often flake off to reveal some dry material without damaging the plant, much the same as the pine and fir and birch.

Split open some elderberry…

Milkweed. I think it was mentioned, but worth it again. In Idaho we had one we called milkweed, but I think it is actually Goat's Beard

Thistle...

Sue
That's them. I grew up with them on fences all around my area. They grow pretty fast. It takes a lot of pods (I think I used 6 or more), and i used an old shoelace to bind in a wick-type shape. I learned the hard way to light a pile of cedar and old gas from a ways away. My beard grew back fine. That is what led to building a torch, I can not attest to its length of burn, but I had a good five seconds before the toss.

First I will apologize for posting a wall of text. OK.

So far it is about tinder.
There were quite a few hints. I will add dead wasp nests too.

Canoedogs has a good point. Walking in the wet gets you soaked.
Even if it has stopped raining the brush usually holds a drop of water at each branch tip and at the tip of each leaf. Dew or fog can be as bad for this as rain is.
Walk through brush up to your waist and you get soaked from the waist down. It just gets worse as the brush gets taller.

I am going to go a little off the original topic here.

I would like to mention the next step to the fire which is kindling.
The shredded paper birch shines here. Another good source is the twigs off the lower branches of spruce trees, sometimes the resin out of the blisters on the balsam fir.
These are all full of resins and oils. They burn even if it is wet out.
The lower branches of spruce usually stay dry even in the worst rain. You want the little dead twigs from the size of match sticks up to the size of a pencil.

Once you are at that point old pine cones are full of resin too and burn hot for a long time once they kindle.

The twigs and stuff are still just the start of the fire.
In a lot of places it is the next size up that is the real problem.
Wood of any decent size laying on the ground is likely to be rotten, soggy punky wood. Standing wood is likely still alive and far to green to burn. To burn wet or green wood takes a very good fire already going.

To get decent dry wood for the fire you might need to look for dead branches, standing dead wood or wood that is leaning on something after it fell.

Now here is something else for fire wood.
If you are near where beavers have been working they cut trees down and they flood low areas. They really like poplar and will fall trees over a foot in diameter.
Usually a tree that large stays off the ground in a lot of places. The beavers eat all the bark off it they can reach, so the wood dries instead of going dozy and rotten wet.

Beaver also cut all the branches about the size of your wrist or smaller and drag them to make their lodges, their dams and to pile them under water to eat later, after the pond surface freezes. They seem to cut them into lengths between 4 and 6 feet.
Some shorter, some longer.
The dams and lodges are often peeled wood with mud plastered over them.

When the beaver log out a meadow and move on the mud washes off the lodges and dams. Then the dams quit holding water so these smaller branches become exposed and since they are piled they are usually dry.
Poplar might not be as good as ash, maple or oak as firewood but it still burns nice and does not throw a lot of sparks.

In the areas the beaver flooded you often find standing trees that were killed by being flooded. Often these are black ash, maple, spruce and cedar. The beaver don't seem to like the taste of these as well as they like poplar and alder.
They are usually dry too. Once again because the dams quit holding water most trees like this are easy to walk to in old beaver meadows. Sometimes they are easy to push over because the roots rotted after they were dead.


If you are in a maple woods you sometimes find small dead maples still standing under the larger maples on hillsides. Often the roots are rotted on these and they push over easy. They are small enough to break into shorter pieces and are normally dry.

A warning
Stay away from standing dead birch trees.
Birch bark is waterproof and the trees will rot to a soggy mush inside it. If you touch one of these rotten dead birch the bark can split and the whole thing collapses at once. You could be buried under a ton of rotten and soggy birch punk.

OK, done posting this wall of text.

I know it's the wrong response, but the first thing I thought of after reading that was "If I ever go camping again, I'm taking my bow and a video camera, and look for dead birch trees!"