Morchella atromentosa grown indoors unintentionally

[AcidHorse]

This happened in my Pyrex bowl.
The culture is a year old and has continued to grow.
I kind of figured this would happen eventually when the nutrients ran out.
The red-orangish spot was the first to happen.
Then there was a slight protuberance that was white and on the surface of the agar.
I thought that it might just be a sclerotium, but I think now that it is fruiting!
It has gotten larger since I first noticed it.



Underneath the lump and in the agar below it notice the reddish-orange?

here is a photo from freshmorels.com


http://store.freshmorels.com/section.php?xSec=10&jssCart=15dad02113e5e386a977a5312a680c0e

I've been telling the whole story to the members over on northerncountrymorels.com

http://www.northerncountrymorels.com/messageboard/viewtopic.php?p=29553#p29553

[ebenezer]

That's awesome! Keep us posted. You say this was unintentional? How did this happen?

[Finspot]

Can't see the pics.

[AcidHorse]

That's awesome! Keep us posted. You say this was unintentional? How did this happen?

Well yeah it was unintentional, but it was most likely to happen, because
I kept the culture over a year. This gave it time to suck all the nutrients
out of the agar. And keeping the bowl sealed with the lid, kept CO2 inside
to build up and kept moisture inside.

Its only been a week since I snapped that crappy low res photo. Used a toy USB Intel microscope to get that photo.

I need to borrow my dad's Canon Powershot 650 something digital camera.
I can get resolutions up to 3000x3000 almost.

Yeah I don't like posting pics on shroomery no more, they are robbing everyone, I wanted those pics public domain.

[chickenofthewoods]

Dude.

I must say, I thought you were spamming us when you first posted.

What an incredible event!

You're the freakin man!

Can you please tell us more?

I guess maybe you did at this other spot, I haven't followed the links yet.

I just wanted to say thanks for finding us and sharing that with us!

You make me wanna start culturing again!

I gave up the shroomery long ago, but I was regular there for years, about 4-5 years ago.

Did you start the culture yourself, from tissue, or spores, or did you buy/trade for it?

How did the fruitbodies turn out so far?

AAAAHHHHHHH!

So crazy! more pics!

Harumph!

you are so the man!

[Finspot]

You know what? This may be sacrilege in some quarters, but I hope morel farming never comes to fruition. Not to insult interesting science experiments and the like--but I like 'em wild. It's like eating pistachio nuts...did you ever get the ones already shelled? The one time I did I made myself sick and didn't even enjoy the fistfuls of pistachios I was putting away.

Wild & free, baby!

-Fin (not grumpy, really, just sayin')

[AcidHorse]

Dude.

I must say, I thought you were spamming us when you first posted.

What an incredible event!

You're the freakin man!

Can you please tell us more?

I guess maybe you did at this other spot, I haven't followed the links yet.

I just wanted to say thanks for finding us and sharing that with us!

You make me wanna start culturing again!

I gave up the shroomery long ago, but I was regular there for years, about 4-5 years ago.

Did you start the culture yourself, from tissue, or spores, or did you buy/trade for it?

How did the fruitbodies turn out so far?

AAAAHHHHHHH!

So crazy! more pics!

Harumph!

you are so the man!

Did you start the culture yourself, from tissue, or spores, or did you buy/trade for it?

How did the fruitbodies turn out so far?

Yes I did start the culture myself, and the method I used, I was unsure
about how effective it would be, that is, I was unsure about how resistant
it would be to contaminates.
But boiling the agar and microwaving did do the trick, along with a little spot of neomycin antibacterial cream. The morel loved it!

But really if you want to do this right, you should pressure cook your substrate at 15 psi for 1 hour.

From spores, thats how I did it.

Well with this culture I bought them from a local international market called
Jungle Jim's http://www.junglejims.com they must be buying them from you guys out there on the west coast. They are those flesh toned black burn site morels. I can tell they are blacks because of the conic shape of cap and skirt around the base of the cap, plus their ridges and pits are more lateral and organized than east coast yellows that are more convoluted and chaotic in growth pattern.
I guess from what I have seen with these blacks, they are dark grey when young and small, and when larger and older they pale out?
Am I right? Its the spores that make them pale, because there is an oil vacuole inside the spores of blacks.
East Coast yellows don't have that oil so they aren't immediately opaque.
They tend to be transparent at first due to moisture but once dry they are opaque and orange.
Those blacks are a cream colored deposit.

This year I managed to procure over a gram of spores from some Big Blondes.

This was a good year out here. I got lots of sponge.
Even found some east coast black morels, they tend to end up like
M. semilibera. Super elongated, yet black. They didn't get a pale appearance however. Stayed dark brown.

The fruitbody is just as it was since last weekend, and its slow to develope
because of the lack of air flow, I believe.

Yet I do detect some more swelling and more protuberance in an upward direction.

Slight fuzzy appearance in locations where newer hyphal growth can be seen.

I'll tell you this:
The answer you seek?
A clue is on page 173 line 3, 4 & 5 of Nancy Smith Weber's "A Morel Hunter's Companion - A Guide to True and False Morels".
And also take into account that the patent says to "starve" or remove
the nutrient source.
Its like black and white.

I'm going to say if you don't own this book you should. Its like a programmer's reference manual on C / C++ language.
One of those books that holds useful knowledge.

But I'm going to say, there must be a hell of a lot people out there that know already what I know. They drop hints and throw clues and its like
when you actually figure it out, you feel like an elementary grade school
student when compared to those ones that gave you the hints. I feel like
crap.

[chickenofthewoods]

Jungle Jim's!!!!!!

What a fricken trip.

I used to roll up that way from Cincinnati just to get my exotic fruit on.

Plus they carried coffee from Louisiana that I liked at the time.

Ah, the days when driving for an hour just to buy food that is hard to get was not impractical.

Too bad I don't have Nancy's book on hand to see the page you referenced...

I have read lots of stuff about growing morels, and the aspect of removing the source of nutrition seems consistent. I've also noticed that lots of folks get primordia, but that few get developed fruitbodies.

Is that large fruit still developing, or is it, as you mentioned, stalled?

FINSPOT - Dude, there have been cultivated morels on the market before, and they got a mild reaction from the gourmetttes. But i see your point.

BUT - having grown some mushrooms before, I must say that Morels are the holy grail of cultivation, due to their elusive and unpredictable habits in culture. Few have ever succeeded, and the few that have have encountered some serious roadblocks to production that have left us inevitably, every time, without the cultivated morel. There are folks who even grow trees inoculated with morchella mycelium, and they'll sell em to ya.

I can't imagine anyone being successful enough on a scale large enough to affect the industry.

But you know, finny, people still go fishing. People still hunt. People still forage for berries and fruits and nuts...and mushrooms.

Even if they were cultivated on a large scale, we'd still be able to do what we love....

Congrats horseface.... I'd love to see pics of a deveop(ing/ed) fruitbody...

WERD!

[AcidHorse]

Yeah its growing good, its only been a week since that photo.

I think what it needs is air flow.

I've found that the big blondes come up on the edges of woods where
the wind flow is the greatest and the rain exposure is the greatest, and
of course good drainage.

It has something to do with the jetstream.

So my little growth will need that and moisture, can't let it get too dry.

If this doesn't help, maybe reapply some purified water with some dextrose or maybe that and a small nitrogen nutrient like yeast nutrient.

Maybe once its initiated fruitbody mode it will continue even though nutrients return.

And as a last ditch effort, a plant of any kind.

I don't believe morels are bonded to plants or with just one kind of plant, but any.
I believe it is just an opportunistic situation.
I believe if anything the morel is being a theif and not a leech.
Not a symbiote but like a parasite yet with no ill effect.
There hasn't been any definite proof they provide trees with anything beneficial yet.

With dutch elms disease I believe that situation just makes their presence even more known, yet you would get the same results if there was something like dutch beech disease or dutch ash disease or dutch apple disease. Its just unfortunate for elms that there is this disease, yet good for us.

In fact I've found morels that have bonded with the roots err rhizome of Dutchman's Breeches, mind the Dutch again!

The thing I would like to know is how much or how far deep does the forest fires out there burn down into the soil? Is all the organic matter burnt in the soil?
Carbohydrates are incinerated and transformed back into pure carbon.
Not much of a nutrient source.

[AcidHorse]

You know what? This may be sacrilege in some quarters, but I hope morel farming never comes to fruition. Not to insult interesting science experiments and the like--but I like 'em wild. It's like eating pistachio nuts...did you ever get the ones already shelled? The one time I did I made myself sick and didn't even enjoy the fistfuls of pistachios I was putting away.

Wild & free, baby!

-Fin (not grumpy, really, just sayin')

Yeah I see your point as well, and agree.
The flavor doesn't compare to wild ones, its not a strong flavor. its a weak or bland flavor, Alan Alda said it was mellow like Mozart while the wild ones are like Rock and Roll with a vrroom vrroom more kick to it.

But however on the other hand,
Getting them to grow indoors will help us to zero in on the key factor to get them to grow in bulk, so we can have a seasonal harvest or an out of season harvest in a counterpart season like fall, outdoors, I forgot to mention outdoors.

[Merkel_Man]

Heres the transcript for the alan alda interview.

http://www.pbs.org/saf/transcripts/transcript502.htm#6

Its with our own Chef Jack Czarnecki who I asked about the video floating as I'd seen it floating around the interview. (sorry I can't find the link) He said that he much preferred the flavor of wild morels.

When it comes to smell I noticed a big difference between the west side riparians and the east side naturals and burn morels. I've never had a farm raised morel so I can't put my two cents in on that one.

Good stuff though Acid Horse. I saw a similar experiment a couple of years ago with the same result. Only it happened in a matter of weeks rather than a year. Once the mycelium overran the tray it popped a bunch of pin head sized morels. The experiment took place in a nursery lab so the environment was completely controled.

They found the mycelium took over at a greater rate than some lichens they were having problems with and were working on a way of incorporating it into the potting soil to prevent the lichen barrier, which caused root rot. I don't know if they ever succeeded or not. Interesting experiment though.

[Tobiah]

www.thefarm.org/mushroom/morel.html This is where i first heard of all this mayhem. check it out.

[AcidHorse]

Heres the transcript for the alan alda interview.

http://www.pbs.org/saf/transcripts/transcript502.htm#6

Its with our own Chef Jack Czarnecki who I asked about the video floating as I'd seen it floating around the interview. (sorry I can't find the link) He said that he much preferred the flavor of wild morels.

When it comes to smell I noticed a big difference between the west side riparians and the east side naturals and burn morels. I've never had a farm raised morel so I can't put my two cents in on that one.

Good stuff though Acid Horse. I saw a similar experiment a couple of years ago with the same result. Only it happened in a matter of weeks rather than a year. Once the mycelium overran the tray it popped a bunch of pin head sized morels. The experiment took place in a nursery lab so the environment was completely controled.

They found the mycelium took over at a greater rate than some lichens they were having problems with and were working on a way of incorporating it into the potting soil to prevent the lichen barrier, which caused root rot. I don't know if they ever succeeded or not. Interesting experiment though.

Transcript?
shoot!
Here's the video!
http://vvi.onstreammedia.com/cgi-bin/vi ... Eat&page=2

http://vvi.onstreammedia.com/cgi-bin/vi ... =pbssaf502

[Merkel_Man]

Yeah I knew it was out there, but I didn't find it after a few minutes of looking so I just posted the transcript link.

Still its good stuff though and if the date is listed you can see how long they've been able to produce morels. I wonder if they've been able to do it consistantly.

[AcidHorse]

Yeah I knew it was out there, but I didn't find it after a few minutes of looking so I just posted the transcript link.

Still its good stuff though and if the date is listed you can see how long they've been able to produce morels. I wonder if they've been able to do it consistantly.

Hey there's another thing I've been ranting about lately.
Have you noticed how there's been implied suggestive notions that
Mills was the one who discovered that method?

The Farm site states:
"This technique was developed by mycologist Gary Mills after much trial and error, and observations of morels growing in nature. What follows is a sequence which Gary demonstrated for the PBS series, Scientific American Frontiers. The temperature, humidity, substrate and other detailed parameters were placed in the public domain by George Robert Trager "

This technique was developed by Ronald Ower of San Francisco in his home.
For whom the patent was given to and issued to.

Here's some more comedy from The Farm for you:
"Let the morel drip its spores onto the petri plate as you gently work it with your fingers. If you don't see spores falling, just leave the mushroom hanging over the agar"

LOL what the hell is he trying to do? give it an erection?
if you don't see contaminates falling just give it a little time and it will be green,
sounds more like an STD.

"Shake the jar to thoroughly mix in the mycelium. Place the jar in a cool (68 - 71°F), dark place for approximately 4 - 6 weeks. Good growth will be indicated by whitish strands of mycelium growing through the medium. At about 5 weeks, small aggregates of white to rust colored mycelia scerotia will form. "

Sheesh, it took them that long? It only took 2 weeks for sclerotial initials to show up for me.

And another thing:

“You have to learn to think like a mushroom,” Berglund said. ”That’s what Gary’s done.”

I disagree, in the sense that Ronald Ower was the one who had first learned to think like a morel and Berglund was trying to imply that Gary was the first who had learned to think like a morel which is wrong of him to imply.

So effectively it must be known, Gary Mills hadn't "done it" actually Ronald Ower had "done it".

http://newsroom.msu.edu/site/indexer/2552/content.htm
http://newsbulletin.msu.edu/oct2705/mushrooms.html

Mushroom farming is not for the faint of heart. It’s been an elusive industry for most – especially for the morels. Mills and Berglund note there isn’t much room for the casual cottage industry of mushrooming. The strains must be carefully isolated and screened. Since mushrooms are only briefly in season in the wild, it takes particular strains that can withstand the rigors of quick propagation. Conditions – humidity, temperature, light, nutrients – must be precise. “You have to learn to think like a mushroom,” Berglund said. ”That’s what Gary’s done.”

No! That's what Ronald did!

Its strange in a weird way it reminds me of Bill Gates and Steve Jobs.
But then again, I've heard that kind of stolen valor before, those who
debate over which person discovered whatever, first.

But anyhow, if Mills put out a hit on Ower and If Mills runs to Indo-China.
I wanna brotha ready to jump out of a bowl of rice ready to pop a cap in his a$$.
-Marcelus

LOL - Pulp Fiction translation