The Morel of the Story

Spring is here, and every species in the world is getting down -- birds are noisily advertising for mates, pollen fills the air indicating rampant plant sex right here right now, and I am so not getting any. Morels, that is! Mushrooms!

I have been morel hunting for a few years, and been lucky at it. I had a good teacher who shared a good spot with me, and helped me get my eyes on. Since then I've been able to do well each spring, finding good spots of my own, bringing home dozens of delicious 'shrooms. This year however I've been eagerly awaiting morels...and waiting...and waiting.

All the co-signs of morel time are here, and even starting to be gone. Folklore says to look for morels when oak leaves are the size of squirrels' ears -- that was so three weeks ago, the forest canopy is close to fully leafed out at this point. Jack in the pulpits and mayapples are way up, the garlic mustard is flowering, and still no morels. I have gone out looking nearly every day over the past three weeks (I started early, just in case -- it's been unusually warm this spring) and have found a grand total of six. Which is six more than other friends, looking in the same park, have been able to come up with.

Morels are famously finicky; the felines of the fungus world, they come when they feel like it -- or not. So if the winter has been not too severe, but also not too mild, if precisely the right amount of rain has fallen at the right time, and the temperature is not too hot, but also not too cold, and if you look in the right place at just the right time...you might find some morels. Then again you very well may not: thus the thrill of the morel hunt.

So today I stopped by the public park where more than two weeks ago I found four morels. Historically this has not been an abundant site, but so far it's the only place that I've found any at all this year. After a half hour of looking I found two more(ls). The first four from a couple weeks back I dried, but these two I threw in a bunch of butter with the rest of the lion's mane and eventually a big clump of dandelions. A fantastic late lunch on a busy day.