What is it Wednesday: April 1, 2020

Can you identify what's in this photo?

Each Wednesday morning 

on Camp Lutherlyn's Facebook page

 the Lutherlyn Environmental Education Program posts a photo. 

Readers have all morning and afternoon 

to make their best guess about what the photo is. 

Around 6 pm LEEP provides the answer and a brief explanation.

Each week's What is it Wednesday post 

will also be posted on the Nature of Lutherlyn blog, 

 after it is posted on Facebook,

sometimes with additional bonus information. 

In addition to bringing you current editions of What is it Wednesday 

on the Nature of Lutherlyn blog, 

we will be reposting old editions,

creating a What is it Wednesday archive. 

This photo was posted as a What is it Wednesday on

April 1, 2020. 

And the answer is....

These are morel mushrooms. 

Morels are one of the most sought-after edible wild mushrooms, and are relatively easy to indentify conclusively. If you’ve never eaten morels before, don’t start now – but if you find some you can make a note of where you found  them, and look there again another year.

Unlike many mushrooms, which tend to emerge in the summer and fall, morels develop in the spring - in Western Pennsylvania usually in April and May. This photo was taken at the end of April 2019. We will be on the lookout for morels at Lutherlyn in the next few weeks!

Morels are very distinctive-looking, but can still sometimes be confused with false morels, which are NOT edible. According to the Missouri Department of Conservation (a great resource on wildflowers and other discoveries in nature) “In false morels, the cap surface has lobes, folds, flaps, or wrinkles, but it does not have pits and ridges like a true morel. …false morel caps bulge outwards instead of being pitted inward. Also, when you slice a false morel down the middle, the cap and stalk are chambered. True morels are completely hollow.”  Many comparisons of the two can be found online. However, the safest way to be sure you don’t eat any poisonous wild mushrooms is to not eat ANY wild mushrooms! And I think we can all agree avoiding unnecessary emergency room visits is a priority right now - save any new wild edibles adventures for another time.

For an archive of previous What is it Wednesdays, check out our blog, http://lutherlynnature.blogspot.com/.  And for ways you can keep connected with Lutherlyn during this time, check out www.Lutherlyn.com/athome, as well as keeping an eye on Lutherlyn's facebook page. We hope to see you at Lutherlyn sometime soon! 

  

Like and follow Camp Lutherlyn on Facebook, to see What is it Wednesday posts when they come out and have the opportunity to share your guesses in the comments!