The Bears Love These!

Kathy found two of these poking out of the ground in the garden next to the house.  They looked completely black outside.  I recognized an interesting photographic subject, so I brought inside and built a little studio on the dining room table.  When I turned on the light I was stunned to see that the fungus in not in fact black, but rather tea-colored, and the structure that the light revealed was amazing.  I had no idea what this was called, so I looked it up, and wonder of wonders, found its name.  It said this: "Morchella elata is a species of fungus in the Morchellaceae family . It is known that their fruitful bodies are consumed by bears in Yellowstone National Park."