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[BilletHead]

24 minutes ago, bfishn said:

Can't remember where it came from, but I once read a convincing paper on fungal mycelium competition. It contended that once a variant establishes a network, other varieties were absent. There's lots of other kinds of dirt fungus. I can't remember ever finding morels in the presence of other mushrooms, can you?

              Good question and I will start paying attention now to see what I can see. I do know that the oyster and wood or tree ear mushroom grow above morels on decaying wood but not out of the dirt!

    Some more interesting mushroom stuff for you all. The largest organism on earth is a fungus,

 Strange but True: The Largest Organism on Earth Is a Fungus | Scientific American

 

[BilletHead]

11 minutes ago, jdmidwest said:

We are dry in patches.  The farm has not had any rain to speak of for a while.  El Nino has blown it just north and kept it south.  I think my total gauge for 24 is still around 5 inches.  I think March was less than a half inch.  The little shower we had last time sprouted mine.

South of me near Dexter, they were finding 50 lb sacks of them 2 weeks ago.  But they also have places near Greenville that did not produce a single one.  Northeast of me over in Illinois, 50 lb sacks of them.  Banner year also.

Temps have been right, but moisture is a key.  Too much cools the ground off too much.  Funny thing about apple trees, the last tree in the old orchard died a few years ago.  Its about 40' tall and has not produced an apple in my lifetime.  Never saw a morel near it.  Mine all come around the catalpas and a lone tulip poplar Dad planted after I left for college.

 

      You have had right at the same amount of rain that we have had in 2024 also. It is weird just where morels decide to grow. The best haul in one tight area was in moms' yard under a pecan.  

[tjm]

 

14 hours ago, BilletHead said:

Growing in a ring not always a true circle bigger each year.

Oh, but all the experts say that they only grow next to "that kind of" tree.  (and the other expert will say no. I only find by That kind of tree.)

I went out this evening for 1/2 hour and it looks like I waited too long. But the younguns had walked this area a couple times without finding  any 

[BilletHead]

9 hours ago, tjm said:

 

Oh, but all the experts say that they only grow next to "that kind of" tree.  (and the other expert will say no. I only find by That kind of tree.)

I went out this evening for 1/2 hour and it looks like I waited too long. But the younguns had walked this area a couple times without finding  any 

                        We have been around long enough to know that is not true they come up where conditions are right for the fruiting process to happen. This being said scanning for dying and decomposing elm, sycamore, and other indicator trees give a place to start looking. 

[tjm]

When asked about where they grow, I always say near "squirrel trees".  But I have seen a few on the middle of open areas 100 yards from any tree. Then there are the places where they were there one year only and other places where they seem to appear in exactly the same spot year after year. Or the yard in town where they came up for 20-30 years until the owner had the pecan cut down and they never came back. I think that the only thing I know about finding them is that you have get out and look. They will be where you see them. 

I'm pretty sure that here they must have been up before that last cold snap with the frost, given soil moisture and temperature, but I wasn't feeling like mountain climbing and every one else said they couldn't happen until dogwood bloom. Which is like the tree thing, true enough sometimes but not actually any connection. 

[fishinwrench]

The largest batch I've ever found was under a cedar tree....of all things.   That ruined me, because now I have to look under every cedar tree in the woodlot 

And of course you can spot a cedar tree 200 yards away through the woods.    Just gotta go look !  🙄

[BilletHead]

15 minutes ago, fishinwrench said:

The largest batch I've ever found was under a cedar tree....of all things.   That ruined me, because now I have to look under every cedar tree in the woodlot 

And of course you can spot a cedar tree 200 yards away through the woods.    Just gotta go look !  🙄

  We find a bunch in cedar groves. Easy to find in the cedar duff under the trees. 

[tjm]

2 hours ago, BilletHead said:

Easy to find in the cedar duff

I've always thought the relation to finding them near trees is that the root mass upheaves the dirt elevating the fungus just enough to make it visible. I've seen pictures of them in pine straw that made them easy to spot too.

[bfishn]

This isn't the paper I mentioned, but it reaches similar conclusions.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8515941/

"Conclusion.
Morel fructification in large-scale cultivation is positively correlated with the diversity and evenness of soil microbial communities. Soils with successful fructification had significantly higher diversity and evenness than those of nonfructification. The higher diversity was majorly contributed by a higher evenness of community composition rather than taxonomic richness (Fig. 7). The fungal communities of the nonfructification soils were typically dominated by one or two predominant fungal taxa. The nonfructification was not due to vanishing of the morel mycelium from the soils."