Morels!

[Dave W]

This thread is basically a continuation of the discussion found here.

http://www.wildmushroomhunting.org/index.php?/topic/545-time-to-explore/

Check out Evan's nice Black Morels on the last page of this linked discussion.

Here's a review of the weather conditions in NE Pennsylvania leading up to today.

March: cold and fairly dry. Some small snow events. Temps slightly below average.

First week in April: cold and with one rain event. Daytime highs 30Fs-40Fs. Nightime lows 20s. One morning 18F.

Second week in April: chilly followed by a three-day significant warmup, daytime highs high 60s to mid 70s, one day up around 80F. Lows in the 40s, one night around 55F. Then 1.2"-1.8" rain over a two day period. Chilly and cloudy thereafter. No nights below freezing. Warming a bit today into the mid 50s.

Checked my favorite Black Morel spot today. Here's a rundown of the sights. dates on photos should be 4/14.

Hepatica. These cheerful little flowers appear around the same time as the blacks.

Devil's Urn or Black Tulip Fungus (Urnula craterium). These generally appear about a week before the blacks.

Trout Lily. Always lots to see when hunting morels. The blooming flower seems a bit early.

Rattlesnake plantain. Another plant that I always see when hunting blacks.

Mayapple plant just emerging.

Morchella angusticeps. The currently accepted name for our most common Black Morel of eastern NA. Walked over a mile of a rocky ridge-bottom, with a few diversions a bit up the slope, to find this single morel! But, weather conditions --forecast for a sunny warmup followed by more showers and temps staying warm-- seem perfect for a good Black Morel season. I anticipate a great foray to this same spot on Thursday.

Local inhabitant seems upset that I'm hunting his territory. Garter snakes are basically harmless.

[Anam]

Its looks like weather is quite interesting in NE Pennsylvania, can you explain how mushroom hunting goes there ?

www.totalmush.com

[Dave W]

I do regualrly explain how the mushroom hunting is going in NE PA. This year's mushroom hunting season is just getting underway here. Stay tuned!

[Feral Boy]

We're having a normal spring for the first time in years. Looking forward to finding a lot!

[Luigi Daniele]

I desperately want to find morels (again).

[Evan]

We had some leftover potatoes and carrots from the other night and I caught a 14 inch rainbow trout after work today. Add that to the morels for the other day and... Not to mention the plastic plates are our favorites.

[vitog]

Morel season is finally underway here in southwestern British Columbia. I went to a potential new yellow morel spot that I found earlier this year, just in case it was producing blacks, since I thought it was too soon for yellows. Surprise, surprise! It looks like this location will have a good crop of yellows, because immature ones are already coming up. The pictures show the first ones that I found. They were almost all what are usually called grays, which are just immature yellows. I spotted more than 50 morels, most very small, and picked about a dozen for the season's first taste of fresh morels. Next weekend will be the calculated start date for my usual natural black morels. With these yellows overlapping the normal black dates, it's going to be a very busy time. I'll need to take some vacation time to cover all of the morel spots in my database. It's a tough life!

[Dave W]

Walked a mile of ridge today and found only two blacks. My first guess at why there aren't more is that the ground is not quite warm enough. But I did find one last Sunday, and there have been some sunny periods during the past few days. Wednesday was sunny for almost all of the time after noon, with temps in the mid to high 60Fs. Nights have been mild, 40s-50s. So I think there's more to it than just the ground temp thing. I think my local patches of black morels have been in a decline these past few years. I'll check my annual records and see if it looks like there may be a trend. Some types of mushrooms seem to go in multi-year cycles.

Still, I was really expecting the season to be off to a better start around here... no cold nights lately, occasional rainfall, a few above-average temperature days.

[4rum]

Humped my butt off yesterday, found 14 total. Cold last night, forecast to be even colder tonight. The season could be over here before it even starts.

[Old Oak]

We've had a stationery cold front hanging over the upper plains for weeks! If you look at the morel maps there's a line where it starts in southern Iowa and Nebraska. IT IS KILLING ME.

[vitog]

It's been cool and wet in Vancouver during the past week, but the morel season is proceeding anyway. At the early Black Morel locations, a few were already past their prime, but most of the 6 liter pailful were in good shape. In one of the better spots, about half of the 31 specimens that I found had an oddball flattened shape as shown in the first photo. The one on the right is an extreme example, and the one on the left is a mild example. Most were something in between. In the 3 years that I've been coming to this location, some of the specimens have had that shape.

The new Yellow Morel area mentioned above also produced almost 6 liters of morels. The second photo shows the harvested Yellow Morels. Something that I wasn't aware of, because I've never found a large quantity of yellows before, is that they seem quite susceptible to rotting, at least during rainy weather. Quite a few had small to large rotten spots. I haven't noticed a similar problem with Black Morels.

The third photo shows something that I've never found before: Half-free Morels, Morchella semilibera. The picture shows all that I collected. I thought that my initial find was a small Verpa, but when I broke it open, I could see that it was actually a half-free. You can see in the picture that the two young specimens have rather rounded ridges that resemble the ridges of Verpas. The older ones have ridges that look more like blacks, to which they are closely related.

[Dave W]

Vitog, those look like half-fee morels to me. But Verpa Bohemica --as you have suggested-- is similar. Another characteristic to examine is the internal structure. When a verpa is cut in half vertically, one usually finds some "stuffing" inside the stem. The stem may be mostly stuffed, or there may only be a few little cottony clumps. But the half-free morel --like all morchells species-- is completrly hollow insdie. Nice haul! Rotting of morels is usually connected to the weather. Excessively wet conditions, a frost or freeze, or occurrence of a mold (usually cool/wet weather) are common. But another problem comes from snails hat eat away at the morels.

My apologies to all of the morel hunters east of the Rocky Mountains for my having totally jinxed this year's early morels with my unfounded prediction of a "good year." In the future, I shall try to exercise restraint and refrain from this dubious practice.

So far, my local black morel spots have produced a total of 3 morels...! Maybe with some warmer weather some late ones will flush. But I am not predicting anything! I really think there's something cyclic with the Morchella angusticpeps, and we are currently bottoming out on the downside of the cycle. Other than a slight shortage of sunshine to get things of to a good start, the weather leading up to 4/17 was pretty good. Last Friday I hunted a spot about 120 miles south of my location. This is an area that warms up considerably more quickly than in my area. A friend and I spent three hours finding about 30 black morels. This is well below the expectation for this generally productive spot. There were a few young yellows out. So I think the soil temp was well above the critical temp.

[DufferinShroomer]

No question Dave, this is entirely your fault!!! Especially the 20F night temperature we had 2 nights ago where I live.

[Dave W]

Yeah, I hear ya. Two 28F mornings here on my porch thermometer. I have angered the gods of morels and weather by publically claiming the power to know their ways. The dots were steadily creeping northward up the map until they read my arrogant posts. Sorry.

[Evan]

I went to the local spot in a peach orchard with my mom and stepdad today. We would have left them to grow some but the orchard is scheduled to be sprayed by the end of the week. Altogether we found around 270 or so esculentas in about three hours. Time to get out the dehydrator.

[davedave]

Good to see everyone again.

OP, (and everyone else) your pictures are awesome. Your non-fungal life pics are beautiful. Thanks for sharing.

I went dormant for a few months during the winter, like I'm sure many of us do. Anyway, this is my first morel season as I moved out to the Seattle area (from Florida) last September.

I was on a run this afternoon, and on the last mile I looked left (I'm always looking under brush during runs now just to occupy my mind) and found this guy:

My first morel!

Hoping to do a little hiking in the Cascades in a couple days to see what I can find.

[theplanets]

If only Dave W had not anger the Morel gods, we might see some of that up north soon...

[Dave W]

I have entered onto my to-do list a ritualistic sacrificing of the ancestral morchella. I shall rehydrate one large dried morel that was collected at least 5 years ago, cook it up with some scrambled eggs and eat it outside on my front porch on a morning that it colder than 30F. Then I shall humbly implore the gods of morels and weather to smile upon the northeast sector of our great continent and bring forth --if not vast-- at least a few nice patches here and there of the sacred morchella.

So, maybe, just maybe, all hope is not yet lost.

[Calvert]

..... a ritualistic sacrificing of the ancestral morchella. I shall rehydrate one large dried morel that was collected at least 5 years ago,.....

5 years ago? I don't even have any dried morels left from last year.

Will this work with dried store-bought?

[Dave W]

I still have a few Fire Morels that I picked in Idaho during the summer of 2006. I'll sacrifice one of these momentos.

I should avoid answering the question about store-bought morels, as this would constitute knowing the priorities of the gods.... which is what has caused the problem to begin with! One may only make the best offering available, and then hope for the best.... Or maybe just get into a car and drive south until arriving at the Land of Annual Spring.

[Calvert]

I still have a few Fire Morels that I picked in Idaho during the summer of 2006. I'll sacrifice one of these momentos.

I should avoid answering the question about store-bought morels, as this would constitute knowing the priorities of the gods.... which is what has caused the problem to begin with! One may only make the best offering available, and then hope for the best.... Or maybe just get into a car and drive south until arriving at the Land of Annual Spring.

Actually, I'm just coming off of a 5 year spell where I haven't found any Morels. None....Nada.... I was living just across the Canadian border with New Hamshire. I gave up looking after 2 or 3 years. Lots of other fungi, mind you, just not Morchella.

But recently I moved back to Ottawa! I had a few spots that were good for yellows 6 years ago, before I moved away. I will soon see if they are still good.

[Dave W]

I have looked for morels in northern Vermont... without much success. There's a roadside rest area along Route 89 where there had been old apple trees. I found some there. But never any in the typical forested areas.

Evan, just saw your haul of peach-orchard morels. Very nice! Those orchard esculenta types are difficult to keep down. They seem to fruit even when conditions are less that optimum for the forest types. BYW, as a result of DNA analysis and a subsequent re-naming of many of the North American morels, the eastern NA orchard esculenta types (and probably most of the former eastern NA "esculentas") are now called Morchella esculntiodes. Howver, I write "most" because there is a virtually indistinguishable species called Morchella cryptica. Michael Kuo --who helped conduct the study-- says that the "cryptica" is possibly restricted to northern areas of NA. He also believes that the orchard and dying elm types are probably all "esculentoides."

[DufferinShroomer]

sweet. It is 31F here at supper time and it is snowing. I dont really expect yellows for another 2 weeks so maybe this wont affect that harvest but the blacks might just not happen the way I hoped this year.

[Dave W]

In 2011 we had a season that started late on account of persistent chilly weather. Some blacks did come on kinda late, but numbers were down. However, 2011 was a real good year for the large esculentas... between 5/5 and 5/15, which is on the late side for my area.

Looking at the records I've kept since 1998, a couple of things jump out at me. First, the rain neds to keep coming. Second, after the morels first start, a few very warm days seem to help. I think one problem around here this year is that once the soil approached critical temperature, we didn't get the combination of warmth and sunshine that really gets things going.

We have collected only 4 morels from our early black spots. Maybe there'll be another flush that's better? There were a few years when this happened. But at this point, I'm more hopeful about the yellows. In 2007 I got a total of zero blacks in my local spots. But I did have a few nice days of collecting large yellows during the first two weeks of May.... elm and apple tree types.

[Dave W]

Season in New Jersey appears to be running much behind what I would have guessed a 2 weeks ago. Rainy weather was followed by chilly weather, and there probably just wasn't enough sunshine to send the soil temps up past the critical temperature quickly enough to suit the morels. Found only 6 in my NJ spot today, all newly emerged, and all in one small patch. Need some more rain and another shot at warmth afterward.