Can someone identify this mushroom?

Around here they’re known for showing up in last year’s burns, and they seem to like cottonwoods, if that’s any help to you.

Thank-you mark. That may indeed help, especially the cottonwood part! BTW…you making any good bread these days? I just discovered a braided Brioche made from a local bakery that is absolutely mind blowingly good! ha. It’s sweet enough to be considered a desert bread a guess, but I eat it all day and night. haha

Just making my go-to loaf of 100% stoneground whole wheat with whole wheat berries- haven’t made brioche since I left the shop nearly 7 years ago! Good stuff, though, great for french toast too, if you haven’t tried it that way.

Holy cow…I hadn’t event thought about french toast with this stuff…oh man does that sound good. I’m not sure whether to thank you for the awesome idea or be mad at you for giving me yet one more reason to eat my newly discovered brioche!! haha. Oh well, I’m sure it isn’t very fattening. White bread with lots of sugar…no, can’t be high in calories, right? :wink:

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At least it’s high in eggs! That’s what makes it so tender and close-grained. It’s trying to be cake!

Cityman, here in TN I mainly find them where woods meet pasture land, especially if cattle are on it. Cow pies feed the mushrooms and the trees give a little shade so the ground is moister.

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do what we all do. Pee in a gallon plastic container then go outside and pour it. I can’t believe you would forego future morels for some meaningless social conventions.

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I’ve been morel hunting pretty seriously since the 1980’s. I take vacations centered around them. I read everything I can get my hands on. It’s an obsession for me. Never once until this post have I heard anything about peeing for morels…

After three decades of hunting for morels, and despite picking 5-15 lbs a year for the last two decades, I’ve about thrown my hands up trying to figure them out. All I can say for sure is you need to be in the woods looking around when they are up. If you do that enough, you will find them. And once you find them, that’s a spot to keep checking every year. Some spots produce only one year, but I have spots I’ve been re-visiting for 25 years and they produce every year!

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Is there a good way to cultivate these? I have been fortunate to find these in my yard but dont want to lose them in subsequent years.

Ron, that is really helpful, and also a little funny. Funny because back in my college days, I must confess that it was an…um…different kind of mushrooms that grew in cow pies that my friends and I occasionally looked for! We actually called them “cow patty mushrooms” (aka psilocybin), but that was a lifetime ago and fortunatelyf I’ve grown up since then. But I have to chuckle when someone suggest hunting cow pies for mushrooms. ha. Jokes aside, I very much appreciate your advice. We have lots of pastures here that are bordered by woods, so I’ll start concentrating on those areas.

BTW, have you started looking this year? When do they usually start appearing over in your part of the state? Thanks!

Part of foraging is exploring, and exploring involves travelling unknown territory, and that involves (ideally) knowing where you are at any given time, being able to return to an exact place if desired, and being able to return home at will (not being lost). I use the mobile app and website ‘what3words (dot.com)’ and the mobile app ‘Navmii USA’ together to accomplish these tasks and more. My phone isn’t even set up with phone/data…I just use the wifi (when available) and the built-in GPS. The surface of the Earth is divided into 57 trillion 3m x 3m squares…you’re always in one of them and never out of range for GPS.

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some mushroom websites offer morel spawn but many can’t tell you if it will take or not. so it difficult to tell you what to do to keep them producing. we have boletes around here but some years they come up, some years they don’t. morels can be the same.

Tulip poplar trees,good prospects near those…or where they used to be in case of logging.

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this year has been so cold in Michigan we can just forget about morels. I did inject some morel and pleurotus spawn in the orchard. I buried it with live (mostly black cherry) and dead wood in 6-8 holes. So far I have seen only a few pleurotus, no morels. But the trees which have roots in the buried wood are happy.

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Seedy, this is a really nice graphic. Is it from a website? Or, did you make it?

If the graphic is from a website, just curious to peruse it. Mushroom stuff can get kinda complex and its nice to have easy to understand graphics.

Thanks!

That item showed up when I web searched (in images) for ‘false morel.’ I’m not sure what it was part of site-wise.

thecityman,
Around here March is when they come out, peaking in late March or early April. I haven’t been out hunting this year but figure they are two weeks later than usual. We have had a cold spring.

Well hello, you are what I think you are, right? Good thing I read this thread! How much do you sell these for? :grin:

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Do be sure to check out Seedy’s post above on the difference between morels and false morels!

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Beautiful morels! They are worth $20-$100 per pound depending on when they are harvested. Yours are worth $40-$50 per pound https://m.ebay.com/sch/i.html?_from=R40&_trksid=p2380057.m4084.l1313.TR4.TRC2.A0.H0.Xfresh+morel.TRS0&_nkw=fresh+morel. I never sell them I eat them and give them to family and friends. I make deals sometimes with other land owners to hunt them and split the findings. One year I harvested 20 pounds. As your likely aware Some people find more.

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