Morel

Morchella, the true morels, is a genus of edible sac fungi closely related to the anatomically simpler cup fungi of the order Pezizales, distinguished by a honeycomb-like cap formed from a network of ridges and pits. Morels are prized by gourmet cooks, particularly in Catalan and French cuisine, but can be toxic if eaten raw or undercooked, and difficulties in cultivating them have made the commercial harvest of wild morels a multimillion-dollar industry across the temperate Northern Hemisphere, especially North America, Turkey, China, the Himalayas, India and Pakistan. First typified by Morchella esculenta in 1794, the genus has long been a source of taxonomic controversy over how many species it contains, with some mycologists recognizing as few as three and others more than thirty, while current molecular phylogenetics suggests more than seventy species worldwide, most showing strong continental endemism.