Notes: Same location as obs. 10469 ( http://www.mushroomobserver.org/10469 ) but almost one year later. These were smaller, only a couple cm wide and tall. I suspect they grow gradually for several days up to two weeks. I will be returning to the area periodically to chart their growth.
The second photo on the page has very good quality. A few of the earlier side-on photos came out with the foreground subject out of focus, but another lorchel in focus instead, oddly enough.
The first seven photos are of a cluster of three. Eighth is of a single specimen near that cluster. The next three are of three separate specimens scattered about a few feet away from those four. All of those were taken on the 25th.
The next eight were taken on the 28th. The first two show the “group of three” — a bit larger and wrinklier than before. The next two show scattered other specimens. The following three shows a single golf-ball-sized specimen, first whole then uprooted and then sliced in half. Then a similar-sized specimen taken from ground-level.
The next two photos were taken on May 5. They are both of one of the same three the first few photos show. It has grown larger than on April 25 and is wrinklier. At this time the other two were damaged, uprooted and shriveled up from subsequent dry weather. People ride bikes through this area, and it was probably a bike’s wheels that did the damage. Next three photos are of the same one on May 11. It’s the same mushroom as in photo 2 — compare the shapes. But it’s larger and more wrinkled.
The next three are also from May 11 and are outlying ones. Each was solitary and successively further from the main area of false morels. The first of these three was growing out of the side of a hillock.
Next two are from May 21 and show one near that original group of three. It’s the last one standing that isn’t a disintegrating mess, so far as I can tell. First of the two is mainly natural light, second mainly flash.
This specimen looks enough unlike some of the others, more folded and crumpled than brainlike, that I’m not sure there aren’t two species here (perhaps G. brunnea or G. infula alongside G. esculenta). This “pit” area is now also fruiting Galerina and Morchella, and is the first place I’ve found this year fruiting at least three species simultaneously a hop, skip, and a jump from one another.
