quote:

Found this photo over on http://www.freshmorels.com
the page on their site that had this photo was http://store.freshmorels.com/section.php?xSec=10&jssCar...e386a977a5312a680c0e
http://www.geocities.com/acidhorse1972/babymorel.jpg

When I found this photo of an indoor cultivation, I knew for sure that my lump
looks like their white lumps in the soil.
Mine hasn't really done much because its sealed with the lid to maintain humidity,
and there is no air flow which is the stimuli for growth, but the house is air conditioned so that keeps temperatures down in the upper 60s and around 70.

It still looks healthy and has just a smidgen of growth on top of it. But for sure its the real deal. Just need to maintain constant air flow without getting it contaminated. And update the moisture when it becomes too dry.

If airflow doesn't help, I can only imagine what I'll need. Maybe a plant? Dutchman's Breeches?

How I did this?
Well I went to http://www.junglejims.com bought some of their fresh morels that had been picked by commercial pickers. These weren't yellows but some weird pale flesh toned blacks that were huge. Most likely picked on the west coast, California, Oregon or Washington, or in the Rocky Mountains. Needless to say, they weren't our sweet rusty smelling yellows and tans we get here on the east coast, on the contrary these morels didn't really have much of a smell, except some had an alfalfa or grassy smell to them.

Well one of the big pale ones started shooting out spores, which I managed to scrape the deposit off the plastic.
Took the spores and inoculated agar which I supplemented with dextrose sugar from
a health food store, and which I boiled the agar+water, and microwaved it before inoculation. I also supplemented it with a little yeast nutrient, food grade urea and ammonium phosphate. Which you get from a winery supplies store or from http://www.junglejims.com, which btw is around the corner from me.
The agar came from http://www.junglejims.com as well. This place has everything.
International foods, supplies. Its like an amusement park.
Well anyway, the morel spores germinated like crazy and grew up the glass on the inside of the lid, and eventually forming what appeared to be rhizomorphs.
I used the culture to inoculate mason jars I had prepared with a layer of hardwood mulch and a layer of grass seed. The stuff in the jars did nothing but grow and grow, forming no sclerotia. I didn't realize the true meaning of nutrient poor at the time. Until I figured out that no food means no food. And now I got jars with super sized sclerotia.
A year had passed for the agar and the nutrients must have been completely utilized
and therefore forced it to begin forming a primordium. A pin in other words.
Boiling and microwaving the agar is not the typical way to sterilize a substrate and
boiling and microwaving still isn't reliable and you run a risk of contamination.
Best way is to pressure cook that stuff, 15 psi, 1 hour.