Mushroom Monday - Cold Spring Finds

Here are a few cold spring finds for this #mushroommonday by @balticbadger and for the fungi lovers group by @qwerrie.
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First off I found a couple more morels to add to my collection. I'll probably just dry them for use later.
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I also learned that the morels that grow around here are not blonde morels. They are actually gray morels which tend to be smaller than the blonde morels. I'll have to look up the latin name of the gray morels vs blonde morels.
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Here is a strange leaf fungus called leaf rust. It starts out in the roots and manifests in the leaf as a bright orange. This causes the plant to be withered looking. This is a May apple leaf.
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I found some early blooming summer oysters. It has been unusually cold this year and it is a bit strange to see these oysters growing so early.
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Here's what the oyster gills look like. They run down the stem and all oyster mushrooms always grow out of wood.
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Since we have such a cold spring the wood ear is still out and abundant. Fortunately I can harvest them and dry them for later.
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Here is a baby dryad's saddle just starting out. This will eventually turn into a huge shelf fungi.
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Finally here is a tree that fell over while it had turkeytail growing on the side. Now it has to try and grow vertically.

Happy #mushroommonday

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All nice finds! I have morel fever now!!! Haha got get out and look around here would be epic. I will try to take the kids out tomorrow hope to get some rain tonight

We got plenty of rain and a bit of snow too lol. I know I've seen people find morels in Germany, but I'm not sure what region. They tend to be the black capped morels over there.

I just read that some regions of Germany aren't the safest for foraging for morels due to them still picking up fallout from Chernobyl. Apparently Morels pick up caesium. But who knows how contaminated they really are, people still forage for them over there, mainly in the black forest.

Yikes!! Yeah I was looking too and it seems pretty slim way up here in the north. No many hills might be the reason. Fallout is a little scary 😳

Odds are its slim chance of it there. Most of it blew the other way via the jetstream.

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My brother cooked up some saltine panko

That's the most popular way to cook them. Their texture helps them batter really well. I would dip those in some nice hot sauce or bbq, yum.

Unique fungi

There's always something different for each season.

charming, charming baby dryad-saddle, thanks a lot for sharing this capture! your pictures are always so beautiful.

turkeytail trying to grow vertically also among my faves here.

morels are magnificent, look like bone- or ancient marble-carving!

'leaf rust fungus' -- you are sure it is a fungus?.. look like some spiders eggs on the photo. if it is... than its a really strange mushroom specie!! how it happened to appear on such a fresh leaves?!?! this shroom then do not like its doing a saprophite job, at all.

it is a bit strange to see these oysters growing so early.

well, I have a conspiracy theory, they do it cause you magnetize them with your shroom-hunting personality, during your frequent walks across the area. how much is it plausible, what d'you think.

That leaf rust is sneaky, it doesn't kill the plant completely but uses it to spread to other plants. Farmers go out looking for it on their plants in early spring and they just uproot the damaged plants to avoid it spreading any further. It mostly affects blackberry plants. The morels kind of remind me of those mastodon tusk carvings from Russia. I wish I could materialize more rare fungi out on my hunts. I mostly find Virginia Stick Weed out on my hunts (stickers and ticks lol).

yeah. I wish I could materialize smth too. but probably not will happen not in the concrete city, hope I'd be able to spend 2 months at my countryside house, instead of 2-3 days like it happened last summer. there will be mushrooms there, rare or not rare, I will be not so picky, I accept anything!!

:))

You have more boletes there, nice big mushrooms for a good sized meal.

well. thats correct! tonns of boletos, suitable for drying, pickling and preserving. so I envy you, and you envy me?

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:))))

no fair lol

uh? do you mean, I have more, cause we have Fairs here and you dont, or?..

You found some interesting mushrooms. The leaf rust looks like it is dangerous.

It can spread to other leaves, fortunately these are just may apples and they are super abundant. But if you see this on one of your garden plants you need to start pulling the infected ones asap.

The rust does look like something to get rid of immediately.

All photos of mushrooms are beautiful and interesting, but I especially liked 3 photos!

It was very bright in the forest. Too bad it's bad for the plants.

I understand, since we have a very hot summer in Cyprus, which lasts a long time.

Some weird and very interesting looking mushrooms!!

These are all edibles or medicinals too.

never seen this in my life except 4 and 5 (or never noticed them.) 😯

The morels only come out in spring, and they are tricky to find. You have to search under specific dead tree species. It's pretty difficult to stumble on them by chance. Basically if you see the dead tree of the right species you then need to search around it in the radius of it's root system, then most of the time they are hidden under other weeds.

😬 🐍no, I don't want to see it directly...😲 Your macro photos are better than the real visual, it is enough...😅😅 It is a risk to research around dead trees 🦎🐀🐌🐍😲

I did see a garter snake when I was searching lol. Fortunately there's not poisonous ones around here.

Great finds and great photos! Have you seen any ticks this spring? We were just saying that it seems odd that we haven't yet.

Yeah I got five of them on me when I was filming a deer out in the forest.
https://peakd.com/hive-196037/@sketch.and.jam/vh6y1vgkfgy
Plenty of them around be sure to wear tan if possible to be able to see them.

Nasty things. Tan is a good idea.

Nice mushroom photography and i have seen lots of mushrooms through your post.

You have to post some from your region for me :-)

This mushroom (morel) is called "smrž" in Czech. 😁

Cool, is there a big season of them out there? What sort of Czech recipes do people make with them?

My wife can cook mushrooms (yum :) ), but my kids don't want to eat it :(

Maybe just put the kids to work finding the mushrooms lol.