I did not know about the false morel. Good info to have. I still have never seen one in Texas but then I haven't really looked. I probably stepped over several dozen and it just didn't register in my peanut brain.
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Be careful before you start hunting morels...it will become an addiction! We find them here in southern OK starting about April 1st. They need just the right conditions to grow and I never found any in Texas (but I was only looking around the Graham/Throckmorton areas). If you find an area where mayapples grow, you'll likely find morels in the same area. They're very well camouflaged and hard to see at first, but then once you find one and start looking around, you'll find more. Sometimes there's no rhyme or reason for why they're in an area. I find them mostly in the woods, but have found them on the edges of pastures and even growing in the rock banks along our creek. They usually pop up along the roots of a dead tree, and prefer elm. They grow literally overnight, and areas that were thick of them one year might be void of them the next. Usually though, if you find a good spot it will produce for several years. We have several hot spots that we check every couple days until they stop producing and usually harvest a couple grocery bags full each season. They are absolutely the best mushrooms I have ever eaten. I saw some for sale at Kroger one time for $8 per ounce! If you get a big mess of them, they can be dried and rehydrated later without losing any of their flavor. We just cooked some up Friday for lunch and are cooking some more this afternoon with fresh turkey breast.
Morels are very easy to identify because the only other mushroom that resembles a morel is a false morel. If you cut the shroom open, you'll find that it's one big hollow chamber. The false morel has multiple chambers inside and the cap is much smaller/tighter than a morel. When I lived in Michigan, folks kept their mushroom spots highly guarded and protected others from finding them. If you saw somebody walking around the woods with a sack in the springtime that only meant one thing (follow them!). When I was out shrooming, I would hide my back under my coat if I saw another hunter. I didn't care if they found out where I was turkey hunting, but finding my morels was a different story!
Good luck to you, and bon appetit if you find any!
Armadillophil- that's a good sized morel for down here, was that found in TX?
-CherylComment
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