Fungi Friday - False Morels and Three More Heroes

Here are a few more foraging photos for this #fungifriday by @ewkaw where I went off into the countryside looking for morels but found none.

I realized on this trip I had found another picture of three heroes which is the current campfire conversation theme by @bambuka

These are the three heroes I posted for the campfire theme. A devil's urn cup fungi Urnula craterium.

I found quite a few in this area. Here you can see a couple that aren't yet fully opened. Before this they are just a black tongue sticking out of the branches, then eventually they open up and form a cup.

I ended up finding no morels in this area. I think I arrived too early for the season. I did find a ton of these Gyromitra brunnea aka false morel. Sadly these contain a toxin called gyromitrin that turns into methyl hydrazine when consumed. This toxin damages the liver and central nervous system and it can be deadly if enough is consumed.

I recently found out that many people actually eat these things. The gyromitrin is water-soluble so if you parboil it a couple times in a well ventilated area then throw away the water you can remove most of the toxin.

The problem with eating these is you can't fully remove all the toxins, just reduce it quite a bit by boiling them. Another problem with these mushrooms is the little bit of toxins that remain can build up over time and potentially cause cancer as hydrazine is carcinogenic.

The rule of thumb for eating these is to boil them twice, remove the water, then only consume a tiny amount maybe once a year. I personally won't try these as I don't want any hydrazine in my system lol. I have heard these taste great though and know people who eat them. I would rather just find a morel to eat instead.

The rest of the mushroom hunt wasn't too successful as I found mostly dried up shelf fungi.

I also saw plenty of dryad's saddle. Around here these typically bloom around the same time as morels so hopefully morels will be out soon.

The branches were also full of chaga, but they were too high up in the tree to harvest.

The countryside was beautiful though. There were plenty of opportunities to take pictures of the Mississippi river on the trails I was hunting on.

Who knows maybe one of these river islands is full of morels that only fisherman can reach.

I hope I can find some morels this year... Otherwise I'll have to go to the farmers markets and buy some then stage them out in the wild to make it look like I found them lol. Happy #fungifriday :-)