I have still had no luck finding morels for this #mushroomonday
I took a trip out to the countryside looking for morels but found none as the weather in this area still seems to be in early spring mode.
The only thing I found was this tree stump that someone chainsaw carved into what looks like a mix between a shaggy mane and a bolete.
All I found were the usual polypores a mix between false turkeytail and true turkeytail.
This old log was super infested with turkeytail.
It seems like every square inch has been covered in this medicinal fungi.
The color of turkeytail in this area seems to be more gray and green compared to the usual brown and blues I see around the area where I live. The Latin name Trametes versicolor implies that it varies in color and I've seen quite a few colors of this across the country.
The only other fungi I found was some Pannaria lurida very common all over the place year-round.
I talked to some of the locals and they said morel season only starts a couple weeks after it hasn't been raining and gets around 60 degrees in temperature. Sometimes too much rain will keep the mushrooms from growing which is what we've been getting this year.
I would rather blame this squirrel for stealing all the mushrooms in the area lol. Who knows if they even eat mushrooms...
Ah well at least the spring flowers are starting out over here. Maybe in the meantime I'll learn some of these early bloomers to see if they have any medicinal properties to them so I won't come back empty handed from early spring foraging.
Hopefully this year won't be a dud in finding spring morels... Otherwise I'll have to cheat by going to the farmer's market to buy some them plant them in the soil to make it look like I found them in the wild lol.
That's all for now, thanks for looking :-)