Photos of Morels - Science and Hunting

Here of some photos dealing with the science and hunting of morels. You'll find some pictures of the mushrooms in the wild, and a picture of a false morel.

This page may take a while to load on slow connections due to the larger pictures. All photos are credited at the bottom when appropriate.

The other photo pages are here:

Page 1 - Mushrooms from America and Europe

Page 2 - Science and hunting

Page 3 - Close-ups while cooking and cleaning

In The Wild

The top two pictures show some mushrooms in the wild. When hunting, it's important to know where to look and exactly what you're looking for.

Look for these mushrooms near ash, dying elm, old apple, or tulip trees. They also tend to pop up near areas where the ground has been disturbed, such as burn sites, logging areas, and near downed trees.

The bottom mushroom photo shows an older specimen near a younger one. They're both black morels, but the one on the right is too immature to have the dark ridges yet. Here I would pick the left one, and leave the right for another day.

Mushroom Hunting - True Vs. False Morels

Can you guess which is the true Morchella and which is false?

I'll give you a hint: false morels have caps that appear "squashed" and bulging outwards. So the bottom picture is the false Verpa bohemica.

Never rely on cap shape alone to identify Morchella species. I would also cut both mushrooms lengthwise to observe the inside (true species are hollow) and stem attachment (true species are attached directly to the stem).

The Joy of Mushroom Hunting

A successful mushroom hunt can be a real thrill! These pictures show some triumphant returns.

Note how in each picture the mushrooms have been sliced at the bottom of the stem, not picked. This is to minimize the amount of dirt picked. A meal of mushrooms is delicious. A meal of dirt is not!

A Little Morchella Science

Species in the Morchella genus belong to the Phylum known as Ascomycota. These mushrooms are defined by their asci, the sex cells of the fungus that bear spores. Each ascus usually houses eight ascospores.

You can see these sex cells in the top photo. Note the eight spores in each ascus. This picture is so detailed, I just love it!

The bottom diagram shows the life cycle. Spores germinate and fuse into mycelia, and the mycelia create sclerotia. A sclerotium is a hardened mass of mycelium used as a reserve in times of difficult environmental conditions.

If conditions are right, these sclerotia give rise to mushrooms. Many mushrooms don't produce sclerotia, another reason why these are so difficult to cultivate!

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The first picture was taken by Sharksbaja and is published on Wikipedia under the Creative Commons Attribution Share-Alike 3.0 License.

The second picture (from Poland!) was taken by Ejdzej and is published on Wikipedia under the GNU Free Documentation License.

The fourth picture was taken by Danny Glick and is published on Wikipedia under the Creative Commons Attribution Share-Alike 3.0 License.

The fifth picture was taken by Jason Hollinger and is published on Wikipedia under the Creative Commons Share Alike 3.0 License.

The ninth picture (asci) was taken by Peter G. Werner and is published on Wikipedia under the GNU Free Documentation License.

The tenth picture was created by Tom Volk (Volk and Leonard 1990, Volk and Leonard, 1989a) and is taken from Tom Volk's page.