April 9-11, 2010

The 17th annual George Lanz morel foray at Big Ridge State Park featured lovely spring sunshine, good fellowship, and some morels. After a long cold, snowy winter, spring arrived late this year which delayed the start of the morel season, but then it warmed up fast and became possibly too dry for a big fruiting. A total of 39 people took part, including some members of the Mushroom Club of Georgia and the SC Upstate Mushroom Society. A surprise participant was Jay Justice, field mycologist extraordinaire, who had made the long drive from Arkansas to join us.

George Lanz and Whitey Hitchcock led us on four forays between Friday afternoon and Sunday morning. The total number of morels found was between 500 and 600 – around one quarter of last year’s tally. But everyone found at least some. As usual the Black Morels predominated, with a few Half-frees, Yellows, and Deliciosas (the use of common names rather than scientific names is deliberate – see below).

On Friday evening, Whitey Hitchcock took us on a personal tour of his remarkable range of interests as a biologist and science teacher. He started with mushrooms – identifying them, painting them, and dyeing with them – and moved on to beetles, animal skulls and pelts, butterfly wings, and more.

On Saturday night we had a magnificent potluck dinner. Afterwards, Jay Justice gave a short talk about recent developments in morel taxonomy. Apparently DNA studies are showing that the names we have been using: Morchella esculenta, M. elata, M. semilibera, etc. are all wrong because those names belong to European species which are not the same as our American species, but new names have yet to be developed and agreed. In other words: it’s a mess.

Thanks to Jay, we have an unusually extensive species list for the foray (below). He was able to identify many desiccated polypores along with the few “fresh” fungi that can be found this early in the year.


Morels

• Yellow morel (The Classic North American Yellow Morel as defined by Michael Kuo at mushroomexpert.com)
• Black morel (The Classic North American Black Morel as defined by Michael Kuo at mushroomexpert.com)
• Half-free morel (North American Half-Free Morels as defined by Michael Kuo at mushroomexpert.com)
• The North American Deliciosa as defined by Michael Kuo at mushroomexpert.com

• Pluteus cervinus (Faun mushroom)
• Polyporus squamosus (Dryad’s saddle)
• Flammulina velutipes (Velvet Foot)

• Cerrena unicolor
• Daedaleopsis confragosa (thin walled maze polypore)
• Polyporus conchifer (Little nest polypore)
• Nigroporus vinosus
• Stereum ostrea (False Turkey Tail)
• Stereum rameale = S. complicatum (Crowded parchment)
• Trametes versicolor (Turkey Tail)
• Trametopsis cervina
Trichaptum biforme (Violet-toothed polypore)

• Tremella mesenterica
• Exidia recisa

• Urnula craterium (Devil’s urn – a stalked cup fungus)

• Chlorociboria aeruginascens (blue-green staining in wood, not the fruiting bodies)
• Scorias spongiosa (Beech aphid poop-eater)

Photo credits: Jay Justice and Chris Madden