Nature Journal: It s time for morel mushrooms to be popping up
George Ellison
It s morel time. The succulent spring-fruiting fungi that are the most sought after mushrooms in North America are popping up in woodlands across Western North Carolina.
The only problem is spotting them. I can do pretty well in the fall seeing the various milky mushrooms (those in the Lactarius genus) or orange-colored chanterelles or the shining white oyster fungi, and so on. But morels are difficult, for me. Their pitted tan fruiting bodies seem to blend right in with the leaf litter.
There are those my wife is one who can locate a morel in a heartbeat. When we re out hunting them together, she ll say, There s one, pointing to a big fine seemingly obvious specimen beside my right foot. A few moments later, she’ll exclaim, And there s another one! pointing to an even larger specimen beside my left foot. And so on. I fake it by acting like I m not really trying to find morels but just tagging