The Loose Morels
Hartford's New Fungi Team... Perhaps your new socially distant hobby
The Hartford Fungi Team (AKA the Loose Morels) is another Upper Valley volunteer-driven “Community Campaign,” aimed at surveying all the fungi species to be found on our side of the Connecticut River. Our data lives on the Vermont Atlas of Life project on iNaturalist, which contributes directly to the data-set of the Global Biodiversity Information Facility (the G-Bif!), that any researcher or student (or anyone) could download and use!
Our Species datA, on the Vermont Atlas of LIfe
The Vermont Atlas of Life is a project hosted on the nonprofit website iNaturalist, where volunteers can contribute their observations – as well as gett specimens identified by the naturalist community (as well as an ever-improving identification algorithm). iNaturalist encourages photography, since a photograph, a geographic location, and a couple of community members’ identifications qualify an observation as “Research-grade.” Research grade observations from the Vermont Atlas of Life are automatically added to the GBIF data set, where any student or scientist can download it.
Spring
Morels are tasty and look brainy. They’re some of the region’s earliest fruiting fungi, and they’re some of the easiest to identify once you’re familiar with what a droopy False Morel looks like. Mushrooms come up out of the ground to distribute spores, which are their reproductive mechanism.
The folds and fissures of morels effectively increase the air-exposed surface area of the thing – maybe the more surface area, the more spores can be released, the better the reproductive chances?
Summer
It’s hot and the deer flies can be relentless, but on a four mile walk we were able to find more than eight varieties (at least eight were fresh). Three weeks have gone by between the picture to the right and the one just above, and now the morel is essentially gone and looks like a dried out patch of snail slime. Takes more skill or research to identify the mid summer edibles, but there are still a variety of strange looking fungi still to find.
Fall
It’s the most exciting season for fungi – from cone shapes to the stalactite-like formations to the left. Brilliant turquoise on dark damp logs and bright whites on dark canvases. Hartford even has the fungi that that new Fantastic Fungi movie suggests can suppress or even reverse cancer.
Fall is when the morels are long gone and the Loose Morels have our best parties.