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!

Hope Springs

Maybe I told you that two or three years ago a huge tractor ran over and churned to mud a rich and generous chanterelle mushroom temple I had cultivated near a juncture between woods and fields so that it was hardly necessary to step into the woods to harvest pounds of cheddar-yellow ruffly lovelies good to eat and share. Also crushed was the fallen tree that was my oyster mushroom gold mine, and logs that brought forth Bearded Tooth, which tastes like lobster. As I surveyed the ruins, shocked and saddened, only religious language came to mind: God is not mocked.

Last summer I tramped over there and saw two or three small chanterelles trying to make it through the mud and wished them the best. This year they are definitely bouncing back, and after a rain I picked a meal's worth and left the rest to reproduce and once again (I hope) cover the earth.

Puff and Blow

I was raking while barefoot because barefoot links us with Earth energies and all that, when I saw puffballs: One fresh (beige, about 3 inches in diameter) and one blown (the brown, tattered one on top) and rejoiced because I had thought the season was over. Promptly I obtained a paring knife and bag and harvested my dinner, provided that when I sliced it lengthwise it was pure white inside. It was. Puffers (in this case, Calvatia gigantea) barely have stems at all. When dried-out and brown their heads explode volcanically, sending spores far and wide.

Put on my hunter-orange cap and scoured the nearest quarter of the Divine Woods, all gold-leaf and black hieroglyph, for the same sort of prize, not finding a darned thing, and then I looked down and in the crevices of a log were whole colonies of puffers, little ones, also fresh.

These I scooped up not to eat but to propagate. All along the walk home I crumbled, threw and dropped the pieces, hoping for more puffers next fall. Not tired enough, I tried another trail and found another large puffer, not so fresh. This too I crumbled up and tossed hither and yon. May there be puffballs, a lot, next year. Tomorrow, after the hunters leave the area, hike into deeper woods to seek  more. To cook, slice them lengthwise, always making sure they're pure solid white inside, and saute in butter.

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.

Gift Wrapped

A full inch of rain had barely woken or greened anything because it's been so dry. Dry means no mushrooms, not since late April, and no chanterelles for sure -- normally the woods is paved with big ruffly yellow ones, and my lawn, when soaked in summer, is host to as many as 17 different fascinating Missouri fungi. Today I saw for the first time that the juniper bush under which grew, annually in autumn, 20 pounds of rare Hen of the Woods 'shroom has been pulled out: sigh.

The walk led me to the former mushroom capital of my woods where there wasn't even an LBM ("little brown mushroom," as in "Never eat little brown mushrooms") to be seen; it simply hasn't been wet enough. As for any hunter, some years are plentiful and some not. I turned to retrace my steps and saw these Dreamsicle heads of Chicken of the Woods, beautifully fresh, ribboned with orange, yellow and white. I took the smaller head, about the size of a cabbage (see the glove, at the very bottom, I put in the photo, for scale) and within half an hour the fronds were roasting to a crisp in my toaster oven preparing for my Sunday guest.

Why didn't I take the big Chicken, or both? Didn't need it, and conservation means don't rip everything up out of the earth. Why not take the big Chicken and freeze it for later? Freezing fungi dehydrates the best out of it.

Happy Hunting Grounds

Carmel moved from the city to the country for two years and then back to the city again, where there's work, and she now visits my place for her shot of woods and countryside and, by the way, my expertise with pot roast, this time with Italian red wine sauce and served with polenta. Tres sophisticato!, or something like that. Carmel's friend with the lolling tongue is Janey, her exceptionally fine purebred border collie. The two of them are among the waning number of my friends still willing and able to walk the woods and bushwhack for the adventure of it. Beautiful and temperate late-October days can't be wasted! So off we went (with me wearing hunter orange; it's crossbow season) climbing some strenuous slopes, descending into ravines, and Janey reverting to feral dog and kicking up as many leaves as she could. I had explained why mushroom-hunting season was over and how I had preserved my finds when we found a fresh Hen of the Woods between the "toes" of an oak tree.
       I said it was edible but I'd leave it there because I had my year's supply, and Carmel, who'd never seen one in the wild before, to my surprise said, "I want it. I'll take it." So we cut it from the earth, and I explained its anatomy and how to cook it (break or cut it into florets and sautee or roast like cauliflower), and here she is with her prize. She took it back to the city--what an adventure for the mushroom!--and cooked it for herself and boyfriend, who was once Demetrius's best friend, and they pronounced it delicious.

Morel Mushroom Confidential

Recently declassified emails between myself and my mushroom buddy, a city slicker obsessed with morels and feverish about all edibles. March is too soon for good hunting.

Wednesday, March 23

RF: Do you think Friday will be too early?

DBB: Yes. Maybe the week after if it warms up. I have tested the soil temp. It's barely 50.

Thursday, March 24

RF: I wonder if Friday will be too soon.

DBB: I said yes.

RF: I may go anyway.

DBB: We need higher soil temp and nice gooshy rains.

DBB: Oh, it is your birthday and you are 50. Then I must come along.

RF: Yes. So I might go anyway. I have a meeting at 9 and then might head out if we finish in an hour. It rained in the city a lot.

DBB: Let me know where you are going and when. I will be at Senior Yoga.

RF: Okay, I’ll email when my meeting is over.

Friday, March 25

RF: Too darn cold!

Sunday, March 27

RF: I may go tomorrow morning. I may go Monday afternoon. I may go Tuesday morning. Shroomies are out there.

DBB: Really, who says?

Earthstars, 3/30/2016

RF: People I know found small grays in South County and Southern Illinois.

DBB: I’m booked solid through Wednesday night.

Wednesday, March 30

DBB: This is the type of rain that might make mushrooms. If I feel like it tomorrow I will go check.

DBB: I found fresh plump earthstars just now. This bodes well for morel hunting. It is still a bit early, but now, with this rain, would not be an unreasonable time to start hunting.
RF: Huh. I wish I could go tomorrow instead of this stupid thing I got roped into. I’ll try to go Friday. Are earthstars edible?

DBB: Not edible, just adorable.

RF: Yes indeed they are.

Crazy People

Sylvia and Dennis and young Sonya were among the 10 of us treasure-hunting in the woods one day during this nice rainy May, finding in two hours more than 30 species of fungi where at first we didn't see any at all, because most specimens were tiny and the big flagrant diva mushrooms, such as chickens, or milkies (they "bleed" milklike liquid), are about three weeks away. Among our finds: Sonya has found a Stalked Scarlet Cup (Sarcoscypha occidentalis), and (below) the 1/2-inch "eyelash cup" (Scutellinia scutellata), yellow with unmistakeable "eyelashes," which I have greatly enlarged for detail. For edibles, on this trip we found only wood ears. We think that fungi, the fourth Kingdom of creation, are the coolest, most outrageous stuff our earth produces--in my view, second only to the mineral Kingdom's gemstones. Guess we're easy to please. You'll notice we (as do Sylvia and Dennis) carry woven baskets and within them waxed sandwich bags to hold their specimens. Crazy people and woven baskets traditionally go together. You can always tell shroomers by our baskets and our socks pulled up over our pant legs.

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.

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.

Winter What??

I was outclassed by the lady at the annual Missouri Mycological Society Photography Night whose slide show of fungi was not only gorgeous--so was mine--but she had everything identified and labeled with its Latin name. It's the way the Society closes the year, and I'm a bit sad because morel-hunting season is four months away and in the meantime, in winter,  there are no fungi to hunt, eat, or study, outside of books.

Wrong.

In a city park so dull I usually walk its half-mile path while reading my phone, I look up and see mushrooms growing high on a dead tree. Into the tangle of trees I go to investigate. What to my wondering eyes should appear at that tree's base but the hugest freaking trove of edible oyster mushrooms, each six to eight inches across (they're usually oyster-sized--not very big). Oysters have no poisonous lookalikes in Missouri.

Pinpointing the tree with GPS I get a bag from my car and remove about three pounds of mushroom--hoping no one is watching because I don't know what the laws are. An ethical forager takes only what she can use. At home, I take a spore print to confirm my ID. Poach some in beer, and roast and make quiche and pizza with the rest. They're delish. The next week, I take another four pounds and share.

Okay, I was simply super-fortunate to find an oyster log. Today I'm out puttering next to my propane tank, and spy there my first-ever Earthstar mushrooms, side by side, like petaled flowers, each with a central sphere full of spores. These are very old and dry so I can't identify which type of earthstars they are; when fresh, they're grayish-white. Earthstars are inedible. But I'm still bowled over: Earthstars at Christmas! What could top this? But something will!

Idiot's Delight

On a garage-sale safari I saw dozens of woven baskets going for a dime or free. It used to be that tins, such as Christmas fruitcake tins, were the get-rid-of-clutter item one couldn’t even give away. Now it’s baskets. Saw some nice ones but did not purchase because I had one, and I’m determined to use what I have. Formerly an Easter basket—you know how baskets tend to persist in a house or garage—this is my herb-and-mushroom-gathering basket. Not very big or deep, it keeps me from harvesting more than I can use.

 

At first I carried the scissors in a pocket, then more safely in a fanny pack, and then in the basket itself because reaching around and unzipping the pack was cumbersome. But I lost them from the basket within a few minutes, and only their bright-pink handles allowed me to locate it in the forest floor. They're useful also for when I leave them in the planter, distracted by a swallowtail butterfly or the propane truck or some such.

Remember idiot mittens that were strung together? Well, this red ribbon is an idiot solution to lost scissors. I’d hate to lose even these cheap scissors because I want to use what I have.

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.

Mushroom Identification Challenge #1

Mushroom hunters eye every downed and rotted tree on every forested slope that has what looks like fertile soil (indicated by clusters of growing greenery), and the closer to water, the better. Poking around in the woods I saw no fresh fungi, and shrugged and trotted onward -- "guess there aren't any" -- when I was stopped short by this club-shaped white growth, about four inches long, on an old fallen log. It was fleshy-feeling, cool, dry, and fresh.

Mushrooms are I.D.'d more by their shapes and gills and stems and location rather than their size and color; size and color can vary with age or conditions. This bulbous thing had no shape, no gills, and no stem. Didn't have the mushroom handbook along. Didn't want to cut it and take it home; it was a protected area, and I had no knife or basket with me. So I took photos and at home enlarged and studied them, and downloaded and consulted a mushroom-I.D. app ($1.69 at Google Play, and worth it) I can use next time I'm in the field.

This is a Bearded Tooth (Hericium erinaceus), so fresh its beard hasn't had time to grow long and shaggy. Yes, it's edible, but I was not hungry, and it is good mushroom-hunter ethics to catch-and-release for someone else, or someone hungrier, to enjoy. Looks kind of like a coconut-covered Hostess Sno-Ball. Or a white bath mat.

Chicken

My mushroom classes and forays with the mushroom society have taught me to recognize several common mushrooms, but one is always seeking the edible ones, and here I found one in a ground-level hole in a tree, a few "petals" of Chicken of the Woods or Sulfur Shelf (Laetiporus sulphureus), so called because of its bright-yellow underside. This isn't Hen of the Woods (Grifola frondosa), which looks like an actual hen with gray feathers and no head; years ago I found a glorious 24-ounce Hen in my woods, which I kept for a while out of sheer delight with it, and now I know that one was edible too. The Sulfur Shelf should perhaps be called "Chicken Breast of the Woods," because it has lovely dense white meat, divinely scented like canned mushroom soup.

The pieces you can break off from the shelf-like whole are fresh enough to eat, and I broke off about three ounces, leaving the remainder. Having checked it with my mushroom-identification manuals, and having seen slides and real-life samples in a course and actually obtained some recipes for Chicken of the Woods (always cook wild mushrooms), I was sure this was the choice edible, but was too chicken to take even a sliver, saute it and bite. I left it for wildlife to enjoy.

Mushroom People

A mushroom foray is a trip into the woods -- off the trail -- to find fungi and maybe pick some (by cutting, not uprooting!) for study or for cooking at home. Note the carrying basket, the socks up over the pant legs, and the enthusiasm of two of my foray companions on this gorgeous June morning. Between the twelve of us, ages 6 to 80, we brought back 22 species. The kids were the best mushroom spotters. Our leader, age 80, explained 1) they're closer to the ground and 2) they've got sharper eyes than older folk. I myself took only photographs. Here's some Jellied False Coral (Tremellodendron pallidum). It's edible, but according to an expert, cooking it isn't worth the effort.

What Mayapples Can Tell You

Out on the morel-mushroom foray last week I made sure to join the group led by the man who'd been hunting mushrooms for 60 years because one must listen to one's elders. He pointed at a galaxy of mayapple plants in the middle of the woods and said, "That doesn't mean there's mushrooms there, but it does mean the soil there is rich." So it's a good sign that mushrooms could be nearby.

Could be near, because we didn't see or find any. Coincidentally on my own personal three-hour mushroom hunt on the Divine property today I didn't find any morels either. But I saw and traipsed through dozens of mayapple galaxies in search of my prize, and also experienced in the wild what my elders had told me:

• Look near deadwood, particularly downed and rotting ash trees.
• On downed and rotting trees and branches, the presence of Devil's Urn mushrooms that have popped open (pictured) is a sign that it is morel season and they could be near. Seeing Devil's Urns told me I was indeed looking in the right places, even if morels weren't there.
• Most fungi require a soil temperature of 50 degrees or more. (It hasn't been warm enough.)
• It's best to hunt on a slope, preferably a south-facing slope. In fact, don't bother looking at all for morels anywhere there is not a slope.

The previous tenants of this property said they invited a morel-savvy European to comb the woods for morels, but he found none. But now that at least 12 years have passed I gambled that there had to be some on 100 acres. I didn't find any today, but the journey, and the education, was my reward.

Morel Hunting Tip #2: Proper Gear and Dress

Mushroom hunters, not just morel hunters, carry wicker or balsawood baskets for their finds. As they carry the woven basket through the woods, spores from the harvested mushrooms are free to leak through the gaps in the basket and settle in the earth in order to make more mushrooms. Clever, eh?

This hunter is dressed for the early morning during spring turkey season, in a hunter orange jacket. He is also tick-aware and uses duct tape (what else!?!?) to seal his pant legs all the way to his shoes. Along with his basket he carries a stick -- just one -- to poke at the forest floor, especially around dead or fallen trees.