Tag: morel mushrooms

Morels or Else!

Posted on by Jim Low
It only takes a few morels like this beauty to make a meal.

Hunting for Mushrooms is Great Outdoor Fun

My wife is remarkably tolerant of all the time I spend outdoors. I flatter myself that she is genuinely glad when I return, but I also have noticed that she welcomes me home with special enthusiasm when I bring back venison or morel mushrooms.  Lady Luck smiled on me last fall, so we have an ample supply of the former, but I felt some pressure last week as I set out on a morel-hunting trip.

Truth be told, I am only a muddling mushroomer.  It’s a rare year when I don’t bring home at least a handful of Missouri’s most treasured spring morsels, but oftentimes that’s all I find.  My failure to excel is not for a lack of wear and tear on boots.  I log a lot of hours in the woods at this time of year, nor is it because I lack information.  I know people who collects bushels of morels each spring and I have tried my best to learn the secrets of their success.

Morels can be as much as a foot tall, or as small as this micro-mini specimen. It takes a keen eye to spot one of these and quite a few to make a meal!

Over the years I’ve also amassed a small library of books on the subject and since the advent of the internet, I eagerly consume every available tidbit of morel lore.  Yet my annual haul is more likely to be measured in ounces than pounds. My spotty mushrooming record does make the occasional success all the sweeter.  So far, this year’s morel season is better than average.  My only outing so far yielded enough morels for the two of us to make complete pigs of ourselves, not once, but twice!  As proof, I offer the accompanying photos.  With my confidence bolstered for at least one year, I’m ready to offer what wisdom I possess about finding morels.

WHEN

First, it’s wise to remember that every morel season unique.  For example, the spot where I struck it rich this year consists of perhaps 50 acres of forested Missouri River bottomland between Jefferson City and Rocheport.  In some years, I don’t find a single mushroom on my first two or three visits and then hit the mother lode.  Other years – like this one – the morel “hatch” is sporadic.  I know this because on my first visit, I found about four dozen mushrooms ranging from freshly sprouted specimens to ones whose condition clearly indicated they were at least a week old.

That first, highly successful trip occurred two weeks after I heard the first reports of others finding morels and a full month after the early bloom of red (Gyromitra esculenta) mushrooms. What finally got me motivated was the opinion of a professional botanist that the big yellow morels (Morchella esculenta) come up about the time lilac bushes are in bloom.  By coincidence, the lilacs in my front yard had just popped and it motivated me to shake off my winter doldrums.

I’ve received many other tips about when morel blooms occur and what triggers them. Many people say that morels will appear when May apples sprout or when oak leaves reach the size of a squirrel’s ear.  They seem irritated when I ask whether they mean gray or fox squirrels.

Another variation is that gray morels appear when serviceberry trees bloom.  I’ve been told that morels come out at the same time that the galls of cedar-apple rust produce their gelatinous spore fingers.  This sort of makes sense, because this happens after a rain.

Gray morels generally emerge earlier than the larger yellows, but sometimes they overlap.

I’ve heard the date of two weeks before the average date of last frost offered as the magic moment for morels, but the dates for this seasonal event given by almanacs and university extension services have gone out the window since climate change set in.

Some of the sources I have consulted over the years suggest that black morels (Morchella elata) and gray morels (Morchella tomentosa) begin emerging when the average daily temperature (the average of the high and low temperatures) reaches 50 degrees.  Personally, I think this formula needs to take into account whether the sky is clear or cloudy.  Without direct sunlight to warm the soil, I don’t think that days with high and low temperatures of 60 and 40 degrees will trigger a morel crop.

It’s also important to keep in mind land aspect – the direction that any slopes face.  South and west-facing slopes get significantly more direct sunlight and will always produce morels earlier than north or east-facing slopes.  It makes sense to look for morels the day after a warm rain.

To be honest, I haven’t found that following the preceding rules of thumb improves my success, but anything that gets you off the couch and in the woods improves your chances of finding morels!

WHERE 

Where to find morels is the other half of the puzzle.  River and creek bottoms are excellent places to start, but you can also find morels on ridges and everywhere in between.  The public land surrounding the many U.S. Army Corps of Engineers reservoirs in Missouri produce scads  of morels each spring.  Hiking as far from road or water access will increase your odds of success.

One guideline that seems to have almost universal credibility among successful morel harvesters is that big crops are triggered by woodland fires the previous year.  Reliable reports of this phenomenon always seem to come from the Western United States, which is not much use to Midwestern mushroomers.  However, this widely accepted wisdom does seem to have a logical connection to an intriguing scientific discovery about when morels appear.

This cluster was part of a clump of 15 medium-large yellow morels I found last week.

We tend to think of morels and other mushrooms as complete organisms like trees, however, mushrooms really are only fruiting bodies, much more like pine cones than trees.  In the case of mushrooms, the “tree” is a huge underground network of root-like runners known as a mycelium.

Like all fungi, morels lack chlorophyll, so they can’t make their own food.  Instead, they get their nutrients from plants that do have chlorophyll.  Some fungi get break-down tree stumps and other parts of dead plants.  Others are parasitic, but the situation is more complex for many fungi, including morels.  Their mycelia intertwine with the roots of trees in a mutually beneficial relationship.  The morels get sugars from the tree’s sap.  The trees tap into the morel’s huge underground mycelium, multiplying their own roots ability to pull water and inorganic nutrients out of the soil.

Here’s where it gets interesting, research has revealed that when a tree’s health begins to decline, the associated morel mycelium somehow detects this fact.  Sensing that its chlorophyll gravy train is near the end of the line, the morel sends up escape pods – the delectable, spore-producing mushrooms that we humans eagerly snatch up.

In light of this, it makes sense that morels would be more plentiful the year after a forest fire might have stressed trees in a stand of forest.  One recently burned forest tract in Austria was reported to have produced 44,000 pounds of morels in one season.

Please don’t take this as a suggestion that you start a forest fire.  Instead, touch base with the Mark Twain National Forest or the nearest office of the Missouri Department of Conservation and ask about areas where they have conducted prescribed burns in recent years. You might also want to pay special attention to the area around trees that have been struck by lightning or seem in poor health.

Frying morels dredged in eggs, milk and salted butter allows their subtle, scrumptious flavor to come through.

HOW

I find most morels scanning the ground within 10 feet of me.  When I spot one, I immediately drop my hat next to it and spend at least 10 minutes minutely examining the surrounding area for more. You do occasionally find a single morel, but more often they occur in groups.  I have spent  as much as 90 minutes painstakingly examining a 50 x 50 foot area where small, gray morels were growing and come up with several dozen for my trouble.

One thing I do know to a moral certainty is that the best places to find morels are those places where you have found them before.  Going back to the sites of previous bonanzas isn’t a sure thing, but it’s as close as I have found.  That’s why I will be headed back to the Missouri River bottoms tomorrow.

MOREL CUISINE

My favorite way to prepare morels is to soak them in water for a few hours to dislodge debris and insects, then slice them in half longways, dredge them in a mixture of eggs and milk followed by salted flour and fry them in butter until golden brown.  They also are excellent served over pasta when sautéed and then stirred together with sautéed onions and heavy cream. Google “morel recipes,” and you will find a world of other recipes.

Spring is Coming, Isn’t It?!

Posted on by Larry Whiteley

Is it spring yet?

  • Inspiration abounds in spring – beautiful sunrise sunshine, birds, bees, fresh tree buds, and it seems, at least to me, there might be angels everywhere.
  • Anticipation and fun to look forward to – limits of crappie, white bass, walleye, suckers and tasty fish fry’s.
  • Special hunting treats – spring gobblers, fresh morel mushrooms, slow-cooked savory venison steaks. Thank you, Lord.

By Larry Whiteley

Circle the first day of spring on your calendar. Put that date in your smartphone and computer calendar with a special alert. Or, you can tell Alexa, Google Assistant, or whatever you use, to remind you of the first day of spring.

Wouldn’t it be wonderful if, on that exact date, you got up that morning and saw a beautiful sunrise coming through leafed-out trees with a chorus of angels singing “Hallelujah”? Birds are singing with the angels, peeper frogs are peeping, butterflies are everywhere, turkeys are gobbling and wildflowers are blooming. Sounds good, doesn’t it?

Since we are daydreaming here anyway, let’s say your boss calls and tells you he knows how much you enjoy spring, so he wants you to take the week off with pay and go fishing. Did I hear the angels singing again?

As I write this, it is a March day. I pause to look out my window at icicles hanging from bare tree limbs. The ground is white, the birds aren’t singing and neither are the angels. The squirrels are shivering and their teeth are chattering. I put another log on the fire. My fishing gear is organized, re-stocked and ready. It sits in the corner of the garage waiting for spring and so am I.

I think I will quit daydreaming for a while and go inventory my turkey gear. Then, when my wife leaves to go grocery shopping, I might practice my turkey calls. I can’t practice when she’s home or she would tell me to go outside to make my yelps, purrs and cackles. Then the neighbors will yell at me and tell me to quit making those noises. I don’t want to go outside anyway. It’s cold out there!

Until she leaves, I guess I will just sit here and try not to think about the cold, windy March weather outside my door. Instead, I will daydream about spring. Wonderful, glorious spring. To me, spring is God’s gift to all of us after a long, cold winter that we don’t think is ever going to end.

To some people, the first sign of spring is a robin in their yard, leaves starting to bud out, or flowers beginning to bloom. To me, the first sign of spring is the mating call of the peeper frog. A single peeper frog is no bigger than your fingernail and couldn’t be heard if you were standing right next to it. But, when hundreds of them blend their clear, birdlike “peeps” into a chorus trying to woo a suitable mate, its music to my ears.

Other signs of spring to me are migratory birds joining year-round residents at our bird feeders and filling the air with their sounds of courtship. Joining them are the drab goldfinches of winter magically changing into the bright yellow of spring. More signs of spring are a bee buzzing around, a spider spinning his web on a bush or a lizard rustling in the leaves causing my heart to skip a beat thinking it’s a snake. There’s also a clean, fresh smell to the air.

Where I live buckeye trees are the first to leaf out. Serviceberry is the first tree to start showing off its blooms. They are followed by the white of the dogwood and the purplish tint of the redbud trees. Wildflowers begin popping through the dead leaves and so do morel mushrooms. While looking for mushrooms I never know when I will find a shed antler from a big buck and that’s a bonus. All the sights, sounds, smells and early season activities always remind me that we humans weren’t the only ones waiting for spring.

Spring to me also means limits of crappie, white bass, walleye, suckers and fish fry’s. It’s matching the hatches on a trout stream. It’s big bass and battling smallmouth. Spring is floating a river, hitting the hiking trails and getting my camping gear together for my first camping trip of the year.

Spring is also my beloved turkey hunting time. My heart always beats faster as a big old gobbler comes into my calls. I’ve spent a lot of years sitting with my back against a tree waiting for the sun to come up and the woods to come alive with the sounds of birds, chattering squirrels and flapping turkey wings. I’d like to have a dollar for every yelp, purr and cluck I’ve made on my calls.

More times than I’d like to count I did everything right and the gobbler wouldn’t respond or come in. There have been times, too, that I did everything right and then scratched an itch or blinked an eye and the gobbler caught my movement. There have also been magical times when my calls were answered by a gobble from really close by. My neck hairs bristle, my heart rate cranks up and the ache in my butt disappears. I point my gun where I expect the gobbler to appear and cluck on my mouth call. Suddenly a crinkly head appears and God smiles down on me. I smooth his bronze feathers, feel his bristly beard, admire his spurs and look up and say thank you once again for my special time in the turkey woods.

The great thing about spring is walking through the woods in search of the delicious wild morel mushroom. They are a special spring treat to me. I wash them off then slice them and sauté in butter until they’re soft and tender. Then I heap them on venison steaks or wild turkey breasts and enjoy their delicate flavor. Besides sautéing,

I also like to bread and fry them. They make great pizza toppings and I like adding them to my wife’s spaghetti. I also put them in soups, stews and sauces. If I am lucky enough to have more fresh morels than I can eat I just dehydrate them for later use. Okay, I have to quit thinking about morels. It’s making me really hungry. I wish my wife would get home with the groceries.

If only Punxsutawney Phil hadn’t seen his shadow a few weeks ago spring might already be here. But he did, so that means we have a few more weeks to wait. It turns out groundhogs aren’t the best for predicting when spring will arrive anyway. A study, probably government-funded with our tax dollars, looked at Groundhog Day predictions from the past 30 years and found that they were only right about 37% of the time.

Regardless, here in the middle of America, March will continue to seem like the longest month of the year. It drags on and on. April gets here and it, at first, teases us into thinking winter is over and spring is finally here. Then cold winds slap us in the face again. Please, God, I want winter to be over! I promise I will be good. Spring is coming, isn’t it?