The morel of the story

A fungus is something most people try to avoid, unless you?re a morel hunter. Then, you search far and wide for the fungus, and you don?t let even your closest friends know where you found it.

A morel is an edible kind of mushroom that grows throughout North America, including Washington County. They are normally seen in the spring months of April and May. They grow in the neighborhood of deciduous trees such as ash, sycamore and tulip trees, and also among dying elm, cottonwood and apple trees.

The morel fungus spends most of its life underground, living off the root system of trees. Only when the tree is under stress does the fungus send up its fruiting bodies to propagate into other locales.

The most amazing feature of the morel is its rapid growth, which is literally overnight. A morel can grow three inches in one night. When it grows, it does most of its growing in that one day. It grows very little after that.

Don Pfeiffer is an avid morel hunter and is very knowledgeable about the fungus. He was born and raised in Kansas. When he moved to Iowa, he learned that Iowans are obsessed with mushrooms.

?Hunting morels was all that people talked about in the springtime,? he said.

He said that before a novice hunter puts a wild mushroom in his mouth, he ought to know how to distinguish between safe and unsafe fungi.

There are two types of edible morels, one called the ?little gray? and one called the ?big yellow.? The little grays emerged in Washington about two weeks ago.

?They?re a delicacy to eat,? said Pfeiffer. ?They only get 3 or 4 inches long.?

In the last week, the yellows have begun to show up.

?We were dry for a while but the rains we got a week ago solved that problem,? said Pfeiffer.

A separate class of mushrooms is known as ?false morels.? These can produce allergic reactions in some people and make them very ill for a day. A cap of a ?true morel? is open while that of a false morel is made of wrinkled chambers. The stem of a false morel will also have many chambers while a true morel?s is more like a soda straw. False morels are usually red or brown.

Morels grow best when the nights are warm and humid. April was an abnormally cold month and, although it rained several days, the total rainfall for the month was below average. These factors delayed the onset of the morels.

?We need two days of 50 degree temperatures overnight with high humidity,? said Pfeiffer. ?When they grow 3 or 4 inches, all that takes place in a 24-hour period. They come in very quickly.?

Pfeiffer said that by the time mid-May rolls around, it is no longer prime weather for the morels. That may be different this year, because the temperatures have been cool until this point but are expected to jump next week with overnight lows in the 60s.

Pfeiffer recommends that those who pick morels not use a plastic bag, but rather an onion or potato sack with small holes. Why? Because the mushroom contains spores, and if the picker puts the mushroom in a plastic bag those spores can?t fall out and produce other mushrooms in the future. If the picker?s sack has holes in it, the spores fall out as the picker walks away, which means the mushrooms can live on in that area.

The location of morels is a closely guarded secret among those who know it. However, Pfeiffer said it?s now well known that morels are often found around dying elm trees. Once the tree contracts Dutch Elm disease, it cannot feed the fungus as it did in the past. Morels sprout from the dying tree for the next three years.

?The fungus is saying, ?Hey, something?s wrong here! Let?s throw out a bunch of spores,?? said Pfeiffer.

Pfeiffer said the morels won?t be at the same location five or six years after they first emerged. By that time, the tree has died and the morels have died with it. The surviving morels will have moved to another tree.

?You need a combination of ingredients for the morels to sprout,? said Pfeiffer. ?There has to be sunlight getting to the ground. The ground has to warm to a certain level. I?d look at the areas that get warmest first, on the eastern edge of the timber, or on the south side because that is the side the sun hits.?