Good Morel Character

If you live around here -- east central Missouri or thereabouts -- get out and go looking, because now, now, now is the one week of the year you'll find morels. Look near paths or lawns or streams or game trails or parks -- any place that the earth gets regularly disturbed, because fungi like that.

I've been patroling for a week the strip of land where I found eight morels on the property last year. Twice a day I looked. No dice. Yesterday, enjoying some spring sun, I found a game trail not too overgrown; while cutting brush this past winter I'd opened it up a bit. Brushed my way on in there with my folding stool and had a seat where I'd never sat before. This is a wooded clifftop area. And what to my wondering eyes should appear but this nice fat good-sized morel. Just one. Only one. 

Normally you'll find morels in groups. Believe me, I looked for more; there were none. I figured this was a gift from the gods feeling sorry for me for looking so hard, walking up and down, finding zero all week. Here's a glamour shot. I sauteed and ate it within the hour.

Now stop scrolling and go out and hunt!

Teaser

On a stroll through the woods on this 37-degree day of howling winds, I happened upon a seasonal mushroom: a False Morel. Surprise, because my continual monitoring of soil temperature shows it still short of 50 degrees, the typical mushroom threshold. Identify the False Morel by its thick stalk and solid, "gabled" or ruffled head, in brown, red, yellow, or beige, as this one was. On March 20 I  had found a single mature Devil's Urn, a cup-like black mushroom (inedible), and usually when they pop up so do the morels, but there weren't any morels, true or false, and calendar-wise it was too early. Finding a False Morel (Gyromitra esculenta; inedible) indicates conditions are ripe for for the true morels, the ones everyone wants to eat. Despite the cold and lack of sun, this False Morel, encouraged by heavy rains, came up anyway, but again no true morels were in the vicinity. A tease.

True and False

After yesterday's rains we were up and running for what might be the last morels of the season, and after many fruitless hours in remote areas, a sweet spot delivered two morels at once: an edible yellow morel (Morchela esculenta), a big 'un, 10-plus centimeters; and a Gabled False Morel (Gyromita brunnea), interesting to look at, but containing the same chemical used in rocket fuel. Cooking the false ones will not make them safer. The yellow morel was photographed in place, before we cut it from the earth with scissors.

Gabled False Morel doesn't look much like a morel to me.

Devil's Urns

Friend and I spent Friday searching for morels full-time. We discovered:

1) if Spring Beauty wildflowers are still blooming in the area, the soil is too cold to produce morels.

2) that poisonous red-headed false morels are the first morels to appear; the black ones are next, then the black ones with long stems and short caps; then the gold ones.

At most, the cup is an inch in diameter.

3) my morel photographs record that morels are more likely to be found in the second half of April than in the first half.

4) if turtles are active in a likely area, morels are likely.

5) that other people are better morel hunters than we are. We found none, but met another morel hunter who had found three and showed us, and my friend was insanely jealous. However, this successful hunter had

6) instead of properly cutting them from the earth with a scissors or a knife, had torn them from the earth, "roots" and all, and because of that I could tell she had not been trained in morel conservation. If there are fewer morels every year, it's because more and more people who find them are heedlessly ripping them up by the roots. Please tell everyone you know to cut the stems at ground level.

7) Devil's Urns, Urnula craterium (pictured), are delightful because they indicate conditions nearby are right for morels, but search as we might we did not find any, yet it was a perfect spring day anyhow.

Why Is This So Important?

My neighbor Terri saw me coming out of the woods carrying a trowel and a thermometer and said, "Looking for mushrooms?" Darn, she has me pegged, but all I was doing was checking the soil temperature because it's April, morel mushroom month, and those highly desirable -- some say the most desirable edible 'shrooms -- morels will be coming up, but only when the soil temperature reaches 50 degrees. Morels on this property are few because the soil is thin and alkaline; still, there had been a couple, and I'd gone to their vicinity and let them know I'm biding my time. Sort of.

Because it's too much math to calculate soil temp otherwise, I bought a sturdy thermometer, troweled out a slot in the forest floor, buried it for five minutes and then read it. Soil has now reached about 54 degrees. That is borderline; what we need for morels is a deluge of rain and then a swift and persistent warmup into about 70 degrees air temps. And wait a week. My mushroom-fiend city-dweller friend is so frenzied that it is April he had already emailed asking is today the day? I found in the woods today no fresh fungi of any kind. I did, however, see ankle-high leafy plants called "wake robins" (often called trillium) coming up, and spring beauties, and Dutchman's breeches, but it's Goldenseal (mayapples) that are linked with the presence of morels, because  mayapples indicate the earth they're growing in is fertile enough for morels to grow. But the mushrooms are not there yet. 

P.S. As I approached the woods I saw a fox.

Praying for Mushrooms

See the May 6 entry to learn all about the dump on our property and what Patrick is doing about it. This related but more cheerful story begins when, while cleaning up the dump, Patrick found next to it a fine patch of morel mushrooms. That's right, the coveted, the sought-after; the fungi I told everyone I'd scoured the property for, year after year, and never ever found, so therefore (I confidently concluded) there was none. One Divine reader commented that on 100 acres there must be some morels, but I didn't heed him. I had scoured every inch of the land -- except in the area of the dump.

Finding morels was the news of the decade around here, but I was annoyed with myself because few things are as humbling as broadcasting one's righteousness and then being proven wrong. To be fair, the previous tenants, Europeans who knew where and how to look, hadn't found any morels in their 10 years here, either. So, Patrick having shown me where he found the morels, I tromped through the woods alone, combing through trash and likely sites and ravines, and found not even one. It's late in the season. The morels grow taller at season's end, easier to see, but they have little flesh. I thought, "Finding just one would make me feel so much better." No morels.

"I guess you want to teach me a lesson," I said to God/Lord Ganesha (the elephant-headed Hindu god of the material world, my favorite). I added, "However, God/Lord Ganesha, I have learned this lesson now. Please present me with a morel so I can quit scolding myself." About to give up, I walked over an incline and suddenly saw on a tree stump the hugest, most dazzling and freshest Chicken of the Woods (Laetiporus sulphureus) mushroom I have ever seen. Yes, edible, and how! Always positively identify such mushrooms, cook thoroughly before tasting, and take only a little first bite; a small percentage of people react badly to it.

With my knife I cut away about a pound and a half of the flesh that some say tastes like lobster. I cleaned and chopped it up, sauteed it with salt and pepper, ate some, and froze the extra for later, perhaps to top a pizza. And on a reconnaissance mission to the dump I did find morels: two. So now my harsh feelings are salved, and I know the gods (Thank Y'all!) must either like me or find me amusing. They are generous.

"Divine Knows Where to Look" for Morel Mushrooms

My first morel

Because this is the only week of the year to find them, I'd bushwhacked in the woods each day since Monday for those coveted morel mushrooms, employing all I've learned from a year's study and forays with the Mycological Society: morels appear on south-facing slopes, near fallen ash trees, between the "toes" of oak trees, preferably where soil is rich, near water and soon after rain, when the Devil's Urn (another fungus, black and inedible) has popped its top, and, most importantly, don't give up--and today the hours of sweat became worthwhile because in a Babler State Park ravine I found my very first morel, also the day's biggest and best. A few minutes later, my second morel I saw standing like an exclamation mark between the toes of an oak tree. And I found a third and fourth (smaller and older, and not pictured).

Even as I searched I learned. First, that I shouldn't look too hard. Each time I found one, I'd stopped to rest a moment--I insist on sensible rests when hiking. I'd knelt to grab water from my day pack and my eye lit on my first  honey-colored common or "golden" or yellow morel (Morchella esculenta). Using a knife, I carefully cut it free and bagged my treasure in a net hung from my belt. They say "When you find one, look around, because chances are there are more," but a long search in an eight-foot radius turned up no other morels, so I kept bushwhacking among the many fallen ash trees. You all know ash trees because I have shown you the trademark "X" pattern in the bark.

My second morel

Kept going, timelessly, scanning every inch of forest floor. Leaning against a tree about halfway up the slope I briefly rested my eyes, and looked up, and beheld my second morel on the north-facing side of an oak, just as plump and sassy as could be.

A while later the cellphone rang, one of those calls one must take. The topic was North Korean political art (don't ask). For a while I sat on a log, then walked and tripped and fell to my knees while still on the phone, and right in front of me was another morel, this one good-sized but chewed up a bit, and in front of that another: tiny, dessicated, and brownish. When a morel's stem darkens it's no good anymore -- in fact it's poison. But I took it for dissection and study.

After three hours, total distance half a mile, I came out ecstatic. I've waited a long time to be able to tell myself , "Yes, I have found morels. I've been taught, so I know when and where to look. I am not crazy or a faker. I am a real mushroomer. I don't give up." It's the best hide-and-seek game ever.

Before eating, morels are washed to remove dirt or grit, and cut open to ascertain that they are hollow (a trademark morel feature), then parboiled to remove natural irritants. They can then be sauteed or breaded and deep-fried, and a well-taught first-timer eats only a little and waits a bit, to make sure the mushroom is agreeable.