Norah and Eva

OK. This is a heads up to those of you in the mountains. We found a mess of morels two days ago, April 24th. To see correlations between different elevations and latitudes I offer the following observations. Let me know if and when you Blue Ridge folk find morels.

Slope/aspect: 1%-2% west facing

Elevation: 580 feet, 20-30 feet from a small stream

Latitude/ Longitude:
Latitude: 37.85868
Longitude: -78.63983

Forest mix: canopy of large yellow poplars and white oaks, understory of dogwood and hazel alder, herbaceous ground cover of christmas ferns and honeysuckle vine.

We found these two days after a heavy rain and they were just beginning to dry up a bit. They were heavily infested by wood fleas...something that a quick soaking in salty water fixes.

It is only 85 miles from this latitude south to a latitude that is in central Grayson County. the elevation change is roughly 1500-2000 feet . I am curious about the relative time-lag between the morel show at differing elevations.

Some generalizations floating out there are that, if one remains at the same elevation, same slope and aspect, heading 230 miles north is the ecological equivelent of climbing 1000feet. There is also a 3.4 degee f reduction associated with this move. So wether you climb upslope 1000 feet, or head north 230 miles, one should see, on average, a reduction of 3.4 degrees.

Ooh, lightening strike...I should probably turn off the computer.