"I'm not sure I trust photographs alone" This point was brought home yesterday. My friend and neighbor wants very badly to find morel mushrooms. Her morel loving brother is the business man I referred to in an earlier post. She's been feeling left out and was so excited when she called me Tuesday night to ask that I step into my driveway. She wanted to show me a ginormous morel she had found. But when I went out she realized she had swapped vehicles with her husband and did not have the morel with her. I made a point of stopping by her place at noon yesterday to see the motherload and be excited for her. When she showed me her treasure, the words that just fell out of my mouth were, "That's a red morel." "You mean as in false morel?" "Yes, as in very poisonous. Look at it. It's red." "No, it just looks black because it's past its prime. I showed it to my morel loving brother and he said it was still fine to eat." "I'm telling you, it's a red/false morel and I really wish you wouldn't eat it because I don't want to drive the carpool for both our children all by myself next year." "Oh, you're just trying to ruin my fun." In the background her husband was going back to thegreatmorel.com and looking it up. He took the mushroom to the kitchen and did a cross section which determined definitively it was a false morel. False morels, although they have hollow spots in a cross section are generally solid. A real morel has a hollow trunk. Furthermore the real morels here are golden in color (we don't have the black kind) and it was very clear to me that the blackened red color was not the edible kind. The pictures on the great morel were very clear to me. I don't know if she just wasn't seeing stuff in her excitement to find a morel, or the pictures just didn't do the job for her. Either way, I left there with goose bumps. I found five more yesterday and prepared them somewhat differently, this time with only butter, no breading. Much better for my palette. On the flip side, I tried just brushing them very well and not washing or soaking them. That was a mistake. Despite a thorough brushing, there was still grit and that detracted significantly from the experience. Next time, it will be a quick swish in water, as opposed to a soaking, then followed by a treatment with the kitchen sink sprayer. I'll get it right eventually.

Yeah, I had to design my own labels, with address going around the perimeter, to fit everything the state requires on. Does the milk go sour? I think cardstock is good, I buy really cheap thin paper. Might want to buy some Elmer's. Now I just have to figure out what I did with the last pack of adhesive sheets I bought - and haven't opened! I don't think they made it upstairs to the printer, I had to clean out my car to go to dealer's (free wash and vac) so they're probably in my dining room somewhere with the Xmas china I've been trying to sell on eBay for a few years (haul it out of the attic every Nov - down to the last few pieces, I might as well give to Salvation Army!).

I found 30 this year down in the orchard. 26 under the pear trees and 4 under the apple tree, some were of good size too. Normally find them in these areas every year, but this Spring was a great one for mushrooms. At first I was going to leave them so they could spread spores for next years crop ( I usually leave two or three), but I picked a bunch, soaked them in salt water over night, then sliced them as Bob's illustration shows and put them in the fridge. The next day I decided I wasn't going to get around to frying them up so I filled a quart size ziplock baggie full and gave them to the neighbors. Boy were they happy! The wife is from Canada and wasn't sure how to fix them. Told her to dredge them in a little flour, then fry in butter. ETA: the only other mushroom on morz8's list that we ate as kids is the puffball. I didn't recognize the one with the spikes, but further down the list is the "western puffball" that looks more like what we had. I remember Dad slicing them and frying them in butter. Don't remember what they tasted like. I would be too leery to even try the others on that list.

NEI ! Not Enough Information. It can be difficult to definitively identify mushrooms from even the best photographs. You have only a single photo, so, unless the fungus is a sure known ID, please don't consider eating it. There are a number of mushrooms that your photo could represent. Mushroom enthusiasts look at many features of a mushroom, beyond its growing location. A lot of mushrooms have a relationship to certain trees, but do not feed off the tree wood or debris. There are mushroom workshops and tutorials online, but, again, I would never just go by those to ID a mushroom that I wanted to eat. People have gotten I'll or died from a misidentified fungus. I have not hunted mushroom for some while, but even then had a more knowledgable person with me, many notes, papers, photographs and books. We only consumed a sure bet known fraction of what we gathered and many boletes that were probably just fine, went uneaten (but photos, sketches and notes were taken). Some of the features mushroom hunters observe are: size shape color/s odor texture of cap and margin -- does cap peel? Is it visit? stalk -- color? Patterning? Solid? Hollow? Long, short, tapered? relationship of stalk to gills (adnexed? Decurrent (spelling)? ... Pores, tubes, false or true gills? --- So, it takes much more that a photo to properly ID a mushroom. Most mushrooms are not edible. Some taste like blah. Some are bitter. Some taste okay but can make you I'll or cause intestinal unset. Some are very deadly. Tje next time you want to try for an ID, photograph it in natural light and alongside a ruler. Photograph the underside, the part just under the soil (bulb?), photograph it in profile; the underside showing hills or tubes and any veil or remnants of a veil. Is it growing singly or in a group? Is it growing in soil, wood chips, dung, rich loam or directly off tree wood like the shelf mushrooms. All mushrooms are fascinating. Keep exploring and sharing!