MontyJ
Deeply Rooted
I went out yesterday and found 3 before the rain set in. Today I went out and found about 25. They are pretty small, but still taste good 
Morels are up
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lesa
Garden Master
Wow! 25- you hit the jackpot! Such neat looking things- enjoy!
Carol Dee
Garden Master
Still too cold here. Enjoy yours. 
897tgigvib
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I had 3 behind my berries so far, but I do not eat them. Not an expert enough, and there is a look alike that is poisonous. 99% sure they are Morels though.
journey11
Garden Master
We went out Saturday and had a blast. Yellows were just getting started and I *should* have left them a week or so to get bigger, but I didn't want to chance them not being there when/if I got back out there...so I picked 46 yellows, about thumb-length or so. Then we wandered down a little farther to a place we always pass through going out to the next spot and hit the jackpot on some of the nicest black morels I've ever seen. It was in a little sunny clearing of an old homestead site and the sun lit them up so they just glowed and jumped out at you and I swear I could hear angels singing... 
They were so thick you'd almost step on them. We picked another 61 there. I've hunted morels since I was a kid and around here you find them, but it's not like the kind of morels my cousins find down in the coal fields (they find the yellow ones as big as soda cans down there.) But this was the nicest haul I've ever had...a pound and a half. I'd almost be tempted to move to Indiana or Missouri...just so I could "fill a tater sack".
Marshall, there's a couple different varieties of morels, but the way to tell is that they should be completely hollow throughout the stalk and cap. Cut one and half it...post a pic and we can verify that for you. Morels are a great beginner mushroom because they are one of the easiest to identify. The poisonous look-a-likes resemble them from the outside but are not hollow.
Here's a pic of mine...The yellows on top in this photo actually look more grey...but if they had matured, they would have been pointier and yellow. I hear people refer to "greys", but from my experience, it has been a difference in the stage of development or perhaps the location. I found a few fist-sized ones under a dead elm one year and they were quite grey, but I've never found any like them again. We have yellows, blacks and half-frees where I hunt. I'm sure they'll vary a little with your region too.
I'm dying to get back out there....but have a lack of babysitters. Maybe next Saturday...even though I have a chicken coop to finish and a list of things to do in the garden. But I think this will be a stellar year if we can just get a little more rain...we've had some light rain this week....need a good downpour! And they got a late start this year with the cool weather. The blacks are usually done by now. I didn't even make it out to my other two patches, time we got done with the first two.
Sorry to carry on. I am obsessed with morel hunting. I love to eat them, but it's the hunt that thrills me. About February every year I start having these mushroom dreams where I stumble upon the motherlode, except they are usually growing out of the floor boards in my dream or in some other weird spot they ought not be. This patch of black morels I found this year was the closest I've ever come to fulfilling that dream. Now my FIL had connections down in Southern WV and would find a couple hundred at a time, but not as purty as these.
They were so thick you'd almost step on them. We picked another 61 there. I've hunted morels since I was a kid and around here you find them, but it's not like the kind of morels my cousins find down in the coal fields (they find the yellow ones as big as soda cans down there.) But this was the nicest haul I've ever had...a pound and a half. I'd almost be tempted to move to Indiana or Missouri...just so I could "fill a tater sack". Marshall, there's a couple different varieties of morels, but the way to tell is that they should be completely hollow throughout the stalk and cap. Cut one and half it...post a pic and we can verify that for you. Morels are a great beginner mushroom because they are one of the easiest to identify. The poisonous look-a-likes resemble them from the outside but are not hollow.
Here's a pic of mine...The yellows on top in this photo actually look more grey...but if they had matured, they would have been pointier and yellow. I hear people refer to "greys", but from my experience, it has been a difference in the stage of development or perhaps the location. I found a few fist-sized ones under a dead elm one year and they were quite grey, but I've never found any like them again. We have yellows, blacks and half-frees where I hunt. I'm sure they'll vary a little with your region too.
I'm dying to get back out there....but have a lack of babysitters.
Maybe next Saturday...even though I have a chicken coop to finish and a list of things to do in the garden. But I think this will be a stellar year if we can just get a little more rain...we've had some light rain this week....need a good downpour! And they got a late start this year with the cool weather. The blacks are usually done by now. I didn't even make it out to my other two patches, time we got done with the first two.Sorry to carry on. I am obsessed with morel hunting. I love to eat them, but it's the hunt that thrills me. About February every year I start having these mushroom dreams where I stumble upon the motherlode, except they are usually growing out of the floor boards in my dream or in some other weird spot they ought not be. This patch of black morels I found this year was the closest I've ever come to fulfilling that dream.
Now my FIL had connections down in Southern WV and would find a couple hundred at a time, but not as purty as these.
lesa
Garden Master
Wow, Journey! That is quite an impressive harvest! Not a mushroom eater myself, but I do find the morels fascinating. Never come across one, in my neck of the woods...
bj taylor
Garden Ornament
that would be so neat to go mushroom hunting. even if we had them here, i'm like marshall, not sure & when mushrooms are poison, they are POISON.
897tgigvib
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I have another...
DIDJA KNOW
Since the 1800's scientists suspected Mushrooms were closer to animals than plants in the evolutionary scheme of thin gs?
In the 1920's scientists found that Mushroom proteins are the same as Insect proteins, a kind of protein called Chitin?
That in the late 1990's scientists found that Mushroom and Mold DNA is indeed much more like Insect DNA than Plant DNA?
The Phylogeny leaning evolutionary biologists have now redrawn those evolutionary lines so that the line that leads to animals now has a line coming off of it that leads to the Fungi.
Fungi are animals with no nervous system with spores for reproduction. Spore reproduction is a repeating theme in life that is not a single phenomenon for evolution. They used to call it co-evolution but nowadays they call it ...oh shoot, some long name I can't think of before sunrise... something like paraphyletic specific character trait.
Fungi are animals who genetically have no nerves, no blood, and no hbox genes. I think those are the right letters. Hbox genes are basic in all other animals that make our shapes.
I think the Fungi are actually the baseline of the clade that leads to animals. To say ANIMAL and not include Fungi is actually just as incorrect as to say Primate and not include Orangutans!
Fungi do not appear to have lost that basic hbox set of genes. All the other animals appear to have gained the hbox genes from an earlier state of not having them. That's why I think that Fungi are the baseline of the clade from which the other animals departed, and probably the departure was in several events, with surprisingly, the last departure being Insects whose bodies continued with the good and advanced chitinous protein.
Scientists will not come right out and say these things are so. Each step needs unquestionable proof before they say it.
I just read about a new way that scientific grants will be determined soon to both ease strict biases and to allow more diverging opinions in the results while continuing with the strict peer reviewing.
Mushrooms: Soon they will not be in botany books. They will be in zoology books.
DIDJA KNOW
Since the 1800's scientists suspected Mushrooms were closer to animals than plants in the evolutionary scheme of thin gs?
In the 1920's scientists found that Mushroom proteins are the same as Insect proteins, a kind of protein called Chitin?
That in the late 1990's scientists found that Mushroom and Mold DNA is indeed much more like Insect DNA than Plant DNA?
The Phylogeny leaning evolutionary biologists have now redrawn those evolutionary lines so that the line that leads to animals now has a line coming off of it that leads to the Fungi.
Fungi are animals with no nervous system with spores for reproduction. Spore reproduction is a repeating theme in life that is not a single phenomenon for evolution. They used to call it co-evolution but nowadays they call it ...oh shoot, some long name I can't think of before sunrise... something like paraphyletic specific character trait.
Fungi are animals who genetically have no nerves, no blood, and no hbox genes. I think those are the right letters. Hbox genes are basic in all other animals that make our shapes.
I think the Fungi are actually the baseline of the clade that leads to animals. To say ANIMAL and not include Fungi is actually just as incorrect as to say Primate and not include Orangutans!
Fungi do not appear to have lost that basic hbox set of genes. All the other animals appear to have gained the hbox genes from an earlier state of not having them. That's why I think that Fungi are the baseline of the clade from which the other animals departed, and probably the departure was in several events, with surprisingly, the last departure being Insects whose bodies continued with the good and advanced chitinous protein.
Scientists will not come right out and say these things are so. Each step needs unquestionable proof before they say it.
I just read about a new way that scientific grants will be determined soon to both ease strict biases and to allow more diverging opinions in the results while continuing with the strict peer reviewing.
Mushrooms: Soon they will not be in botany books. They will be in zoology books.
- Thread starter
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MontyJ
Deeply Rooted
Journey, somehow I just knew you would appreciate this thread You had quite the haul! The first three I found were blacks, the last 25 or so were all yellows. I also noticed they are further down the hill than usuall for this time of year. If it follows the usuall trend, the bigger ones will be coming up nearer the top of the ridge this weekend.
You know, I have found some smaller ones and marked them and left them for a few days hoping they would get bigger, but they never did. My FIL says if you see it, pick it. "It ain't gonna get no dang bigger!" So he says.
You had quite the haul! The first three I found were blacks, the last 25 or so were all yellows. I also noticed they are further down the hill than usuall for this time of year. If it follows the usuall trend, the bigger ones will be coming up nearer the top of the ridge this weekend.You know, I have found some smaller ones and marked them and left them for a few days hoping they would get bigger, but they never did. My FIL says if you see it, pick it. "It ain't gonna get no dang bigger!" So he says.
majorcatfish
Garden Master
i am so envious, jealous etc etc..journey11 said:We went out Saturday and had a blast. Yellows were just getting started and I *should* have left them a week or so to get bigger, but I didn't want to chance them not being there when/if I got back out there...so I picked 46 yellows, about thumb-length or so. Then we wandered down a little farther to a place we always pass through going out to the next spot and hit the jackpot on some of the nicest black morels I've ever seen. It was in a little sunny clearing of an old homestead site and the sun lit them up so they just glowed and jumped out at you and I swear I could hear angels singing...
Marshall, there's a couple different varieties of morels, but the way to tell is that they should be completely hollow throughout the stalk and cap. Cut one and half it...post a pic and we can verify that for you. Morels are a great beginner mushroom because they are one of the easiest to identify. The poisonous look-a-likes resemble them from the outside but are not hollow.
Here's a pic of mine...The yellows on top in this photo actually look more grey...but if they had matured, they would have been pointier and yellow. I hear people refer to "greys", but from my experience, it has been a difference in the stage of development or perhaps the location. I found a few fist-sized ones under a dead elm one year and they were quite grey, but I've never found any like them again. We have yellows, blacks and half-frees where I hunt. I'm sure they'll vary a little with your region too.
http://www.theeasygarden.com/forum/uploads/6486_imgp3001b_web.jpg
http://www.theeasygarden.com/forum/uploads/6486_imgp2982b_web.jpg
I'm dying to get back out there....but have a lack of babysitters.
Sorry to carry on. I am obsessed with morel hunting. I love to eat them, but it's the hunt that thrills me. About February every year I start having these mushroom dreams where I stumble upon the motherlode, except they are usually growing out of the floor boards in my dream or in some other weird spot they ought not be. This patch of black morels I found this year was the closest I've ever come to fulfilling that dream.
nice harvest, we have mushroom everywhere here, and not one edible
