false morel

plural false morels

1. Any of several Ascomycota mushrooms in the genus Gyromitra which bear a resemblance to the highly regarded true morels of the genus Morchella.

   1 more example

   From the responses, the team learned that the ALS patients were not the only mushroom foragers in town, but they shared an affinity for a particular species that local interviewees without ALS said they never touched: the false morel. A false morel looks like a brain that has been left out in the sun. Its cap is a shriveled mass of brown folds, darker than the caramel hue of the true morel.

   2025 March 23, Shayla Love, “An ‘Impossible’ Disease Outbreak in the Alps”, in The Atlantic