Our First Morel

Last Sunday Lynne, Tajenay and I searched with our friends Shirley and Diane for morel mushrooms, but found none. We did enjoy a great day in the woods and saw black-cherry blossoms, lots of wild-flowers including: may-apples which were out with buds but no blooms, "trout-lilys" everywhere but only a few had shooting star blooms, no trillium, but a few jack-in-pulpits had their hoods started , and many purple and yellow violets. Unfortunately, so was the garlic mustard.

Today, Lynne and I went again and much to our dismay, we found large areas of garlic mustard blooming and choking out everything they could. We jumped from one dead elm to another trying to find a morel. After about 20 minutes, we found it. One perfect morel mushroom poking up from bare dirt. It was only one, but it was huge (see photo). It was a couple of feet from a small dead elm on a north-facing slope and about four feet from a large dead elm. No may-apples right at that spot, but lots of may-apples with blossoms nearby.

We were sure we would find more mushrooms after finally finding one. But, it was not to be. We stayed for about two hours and never found another morel. We did find lots more violets (purple, yellow, and white), and Soloman's seal, as well as several fairly large Jack-in-the-Pulpits. The honey-suckle has small leaves now, and the burning bush too. It would be a good time of year to try and get those cut back. If only I wanted to work instead of look for mushrooms.

We did do some work though as we threw many small and large rocks back to the stream crossing that we want to keep for getting to the back of the timber.