Besides the fact that they keep me in the dark and feed me BS …
I have some strange mushrooms coming up on my lawn where I removed a lilac hedge about four months ago. I haven’t seen anything like them. I have not been able to find a decent mushroom indentification site on-line with sufficient pictures for good identification (What? Buy a book? Me?).
They start out as greyish white domes one to two inches across. These break open after a couple of weeks and a much longer phalic shape emerges nearly overnight. This is capped by a blackish mottled fleshy cap. They seem to be morels except for the following:
1). Morels come out in May. These are coming out in September.
2). The pictures I have seen of morels show the cap to have rectangular(ish) ridges whereas mine are circular(ish).
3). Morels are supposed to be about four inches long, wheras these are about seven to eight inches long.
4). The shafts on mine are very shiny and smooth, slightly pearly opalescent. The morel photos show shafts that look rough and bumpy.
5). The morel pics I’ve seen appear to be growing vertical, whereas mine are growing along the ground.
Here’s a morel pic that vaguely resembles mine (with the exceptions noted above):
I took some pics, but I haven’t found an image host that doesn’t want to besiege me with junk mail. I can send them as email (if anyone gives a hoot).
I would hate to miss out on what is supposed to be a culinary delight only inches from my door, but then again, I would also hate to miss the rest of my life, too. Any help appreciated.
Don’t know what you’ve got – but it ain’t morels. They are most definately a spring phenomenon, and all the ones I’ve ever seen, picked and eaten look just like the ones in the picture you posted. Some a little bigger, some a little smaller, some with slightly shorter stems but the shape and square honeycombing were unmistakeable. So keep looking for info, but don’t eat these babies.
Dig around on [u]RogersMushrooms[/u] for a while. There’s a handy “Visual Key” which should help you narrow it down. The “Easy Key” might also be useful if you can describe the mushroom well enough.
There are a number of mushrooms that look somewhat like morels. I’ve had morels growing in my yard, exactly once in each of my houses. There’s nothing as disappointing as making sure one of these babies goes to spore, protecting the area, and not having them back the next year. There were several of them the first time, and we harvested a couple and sauteed them up in butter. Mmmmm.
If you use the Easy Key and click on “North American” and “Hallucinogenic,” you get very nice pictures of all the Psilocybes. (Kids – Don’t any of you try this at home. All hallucinogenic mushrooms can be dangerous to eat. Do not eat these mushrooms and then go see “2001: A Space Odyssey.”)
Do enjoy looking at them, and lookign them up.
Have you come closer to identifying them yet?
Be sure, before you harvest any for food, that you
check everything. Cut them open and look for the
shape inside too.
I picked a couple of boletes and some hedgehogs on my way
home down the trail last night, and sauteed them as an appetizer
for me and my husband. Fortunately the kids don’t like them yet.
Yum!
djm, have you tried contacting a local mycological club?
The staff at a local botanical garden, forest preserve or faculty in the botany department at a local university might be able to give you the contact #s if you can’t find them on the internet.
djm: As Paul suggested, it might be a “stinkhorn”. Do a google image search on stinkhorn and you’ll find a multitude of photos. Many of them look quite morel-like. And stinkhorns are summer/fall mushrooms.
When I lived in Minnesota, Morels were abundant around my folk’s place. Every spring we’d pluck loads of them. Sauteed in butter and slap 'em across a big fat juicy Porterhouse steak. THAT’S what I’m talkin 'bout!
Too bad I nolonger live there, nor ingest mammals.
If only we could have a drop of rain we’d get a good crop of wild fungi around here for certain. Near my house we get field mushrooms (much tastier than those shop-bought abominations that are hopeless without lashings of garlic and parsley - mind you…), huge great horse mushrooms that smell of aniseed, giant puff-balls, shaggy ink caps and parasols. I love 'em all. We have destroying angels in the vicinity so you have to know what you’re doing. The secret with all the edible fungi is to get 'em young before they go tough and dry and the maggots are in them. Then fry in butter with a bit of pepper. Puff-ball, in big round slices, dipped in egg then breadcrumbs and fried, makes a fabulous accompaniment with kippers on toast for breakfast. I’m the only person in our house who will dare to eat any fungus not bought in plastic wrapping from a supermarket.
The only mushrooms I can find around here are the psychedelic variety, and no amount of butter (or anything else for that matter) can make them taste good.
