The Elusive Morel Mushroom

I couldn’t find any pictures that show just how difficult the morel mushrooms are to find here in the woods of Pennsylvania. However, I think you can see from the image on the bottom. Now just imagine the forest floor covered in oak leaves and trying to spot these guys poking their heads up through!

If, you know where a patch is, they are easier to find, because you know they are there and once you spot the first 1, they are easier to find. Just try finding a new patch tho, you can be in the woods for hours and not find a single 1.

Around here they mature around the end of April into the 1st part of May coinciding with the 1st week of Spring gobbler season.

They seem to grow in a variety of environments. The spot we find them in I believe was an orchard at 1 time. I have read that they grow mainly on south facing slopes, that they like soil underneath Ash and Oak trees, and that they also like the ground under dead Elms. I don’t know if there are any elms left around here, there was a disease that nearly wiped them off of the face of the planet a few years back.

If you like mushrooms, then you will definently like these things. Fry them in butter and serve as a side dish to anything you like.

This entry was posted on Saturday, March 15th, 2008 at 11:50 am and is filed under Outdoors. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.