Those are morchella esculenta. They don't fruit much in the UK but are supposedly mycorrhizal mainly with ash trees and maybe other species. The ones you find on bark chip are morchella elata and are the ones that you have most chance of finding. I make a point to check out any flower beds I pass each spring but so far have not seen any. You can buy dried ones in a jar from delicatessens but will probably wait till Lady Luck takes a shine and try them fresh. I'm not holding my breath. :-)

Thanks MushroomMike. Good to have a knowledgeable fellow like yourself on board. I love morels but they aren't found around here (SW France), although I think there are a lot further South towards the Spanish border. We had a Canadian friend who used to send us a huge bag of them every year. She hailed from Czechoslovakia and used to go into the pine forest with a wheel barrow. No-one else there knew or cared what they were. She would dry them, bag them and send them back to her family in Europe.
We get a lot of ceps here, but you have to be before dawn as the competition is stiff. The funny thing is that the French don't rate the common field mushroom at all - we can pick as much of them as we like.

Quote from: Naga on December 14, 2014, 09:23 PM
Not too sure about my mushrooms, fried, but that looks like a decent slug of pastis sitting beside them on the table!

When in Rome

Phil is correct, they sometimes show up dried in Lidl's 'luxury' range. 13euros for 30g or 800euros a kg. Cheap as chips.