Description
Resembling a brain, the irregularly shaped cap may be up to 10 centimetres (3.9 in) high and 15 centimetres (5.9 in) wide. Initially smooth, it becomes progressively more wrinkled as it grows and ages. The cap colour may be various shades of reddish-, chestnut-, purplish-, bay-, dark or sometimes golden-brown. Specimens from California may have more reddish-brown caps. Attached to the cap at several points, the stipe is 3–6 centimetres (1.2–2.4 in) high and 2–3 centimetres (0.8–1.2 in) wide. Gyromitra esculenta has a solid stipe whereas those of true morels (Morchella spp.) are hollow. The smell can be pleasant and has been described as fruity, and the fungus is mild-tasting. The spore print is whitish, with transparent spores that are elliptical and 17–22 μm in length.
G. esculenta resembles the various species of true morel, although the latter are more symmetric and look more like pitted gray, tan, or brown sponges. Its cap is generally darker and larger.
Read more about this topic: Gyromitra Esculenta
Famous quotes containing the word description:
“I was here first introduced to Joe.... He was a good-looking Indian, twenty-four years old, apparently of unmixed blood, short and stout, with a broad face and reddish complexion, and eyes, methinks, narrower and more turned up at the outer corners than ours, answering to the description of his race. Besides his underclothing, he wore a red flannel shirt, woolen pants, and a black Kossuth hat, the ordinary dress of the lumberman, and, to a considerable extent, of the Penobscot Indian.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“Do not require a description of the countries towards which you sail. The description does not describe them to you, and to- morrow you arrive there, and know them by inhabiting them.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“It is possible—indeed possible even according to the old conception of logic—to give in advance a description of all ‘true’ logical propositions. Hence there can never be surprises in logic.”
—Ludwig Wittgenstein (1889–1951)