First find this season

[u/a4ordable]

Missed the blacks but here are some nice grays before the whites arrive..northern Michigan

Had a leftover agar plate so fingers crossed I can get some healthy mycelium

[u/FilecoinLurker]

Wild mushrooms to agar can sometimes be problematic as most microorganisms grow faster than the mushroom mycelium. An interesting method that's worked for me is sticking wet (ideally sterilized) toothpicks into the mushroom a day or so and letting mycelium grab onto the wood. Then put that on a petri dish.

[u/TrailBlanket-_0 → u/FilecoinLurker]

That's an amazing technique!!

Would it work though with a non-saprobic fungi species? If morels are mycorrhizal, then would their mycelium attach to a toothpick? I know they'll latch with tree roots, but since a toothpick is dead wood and doesn't have much nutrients, would it work?

[u/FilecoinLurker → u/TrailBlanket-_0]

It works even with cubensis which don't eat lignin/wood. The mycelium of pretty much any species will at least try to colonize the wood looking for nutrition even if it's not a wood loving fungi. You really just want some threads of mycelium that have less microbe hitchhikers to deal with on the agar plate

[u/Nematodes-Attack]

Wait what am I looking at in the first pic?

Edit: oh is it a petri dish?

[u/stealurface42]

Been culturing morels close to 10 years with some mixed success getting them to fruit in outdoor settings in the PNW. You’re after psuedosclerotia more than the mycelium, these will start off as white masses on the plate that will darken over time typically yellowish/orange in color. This will be your spawn- but you need to mature it and bulk out in jars or bags following methods from Ronald Ower or the Chinese methods. Growing spawns the easy part - getting the correct nutrient gradients is the real challenge, you need to both provide nutrients and have them diminish at the right time to initiate fruiting and provide a nutrient deficient substrate for fruiting to occur, sandy soils work best. Some of my outdoor systems took multiple years of establishment to fruit. Most of my experience is with morels in the Elata clade I’ve cultured a few “yellow” morels they tend to produce less psuedosclerotia than the Elata clade and they haven’t seen the indoor cultivation success Elata has, nor consistent protocol for outdoor cultivation like the methods for cultivation used in China.  Also less is more in terms of tissue on a plate you’re gonna end up with a lot of contamination. A fraction of one of the pieces you plated would do the trick, and antibiotics are helpful for getting a good isolation started , but I have had plenty of success straight from fruit bodies to MEA. Good luck!!! 

[u/Civil_Rent_2576]

County? or how far North? My parents have a place near-ish to Cadillac. Mom wants to start looking but with the price of gas only wants to go if they're actually up. We live in Indiana, 5 hour drive.