Mushrooms Identification: Whoooo Are You? Who-ooo, Who-ooo?

Escumitra or Verpa?

Whoooooo Are You? Who-ooo, Who-ooo? (CSI music theme)

The mushroom pictures I posted earlier this week forced me to study my mushroom book, look online for images that resembled the mushrooms I found, and finally, to ask for help from our local mycologist, P.

She was kind enough to answer my plea and offered this advice on mushroom identification:

"The False Morel, also know as a Brain Mushroom – for fairly obvious reasons – is properly called Gyromitra esculenta.

...It’s not always possible to tell a mushroom by just seeing one aspect of it. For example your morel, is the cap attached to the stem or is it free except at the top? It looks free, but if it’s not then it’s not a morel, but a Verpa. It works best if you took several shots, from several different angles (this usually involves picking the mushroom so you can get a shot of the gills) and send then to me for identification purposes or you could always bring it over – if I’m home.... Mushrooms get complicated once you decide to put a proper name to them."

P

Like P., I am simply curious and not looking for lunch. So I will look at the mushrooms, I will take pictures and I will cut and slice them - possibly - to identify them. But I certainly don't plan on eating any... Here's an interesting link to the Canadian Journal of Emergency Medicine with pictures of the Morels, real and false. Better be cautious than suffer the symptoms described there!

I especially paid attention to the following paragraph from the above website:

The primary toxin, gyromitrin (acetaldehyde-formylmethylhydrazone), is hydrolyzed easily by cooking and by stomach acid into methylformylhydrazine and then into monomethylhydrazine (MMH). MMH, a component of rocket fuel, vapourizes at 87.5°C and, while most is boiled off during food preparation, some may remain in the cooking water with the potential for ingestion unless the water is discarded. Because MMH toxin is volatile, the chef may inhale toxin during preparation and become sicker than the dinner guests. Drying the mushrooms for several days can reduce the toxin concentration.

Now, there's food for thought.