Central Pennsylvania Mushroom Club

Today I checked what I have found to be a fairly reliable spot for black morels near my home in Huntingdon County. I found two small morels just poking through the leaves. That's not much, but I have been monitoring the spot for a couple of weeks now and today was the first, welcome sign that the morels are on the way. I found morels in the same spot last year during the final days of March, about three weeks earlier than this year. But last year was quite a fluke in terms of unusually warm weather early in the spring, so I consider the timing this year to be more "normal." I checked a second spot nearby and did not find anything there, but it usually produces a little later than the indicator patch. We had a significant rain after I returned home. That is usually a good thing in terms of mushroom fruitings, but the rain was spawned by an approaching cold front so it remains to be seen how the two potentially offsetting factors play out. Happy hunting. Dave