Morels

Early this month, my brother and I (OK mostly my brother- hah!) were digging out a drainage ditch here at the house. It is an old concrete ditch about 4 foot deep, but over the years it has filled up with leaves almost to the top. Frank (my brother) wanted to take some of this old leaf mould back to his garden, and we wanted the ditch emptied out, so it seemed like a pretty good arrangement.

While he was digging however he came across this mushroom which I thought I recognized immediately.

Well, I looked at a guide to identification for them, and it seems that it really is a morel; Probably a yellow morel. From what I've read, only the 'false morel' is close in appearance, and it is easy to differentiate because it isn't hollow. This mushroom was hollow through both the stem and the cap. In fact, the cap even had a hole in the top- though I think it may have been broken a little.

We didn't eat it however, because of the difference between sure and pretty sure- and because you never know with the internet. As one website advised, "You can actually eat ANY mushroom, it's just that some can only be eaten once." (paraphrased and can't remember where I read it- sorry to not credit..)

Anyway, this has really been on my mind this morning. Wouldn't that just be amazing if I could encourage my own little wild mushroom patch here? And MORELS no less. I could only be happier with truffles!

I have some emails out to experts on morels, hopefully I can get some more info on this.

If you know something about wild mushrooms please chime in or drop me a line. In the meantime I'm going to tag this post with Wildlife, and optimistically with Garden- let's see if we can make that a reality.