'Fun'gus for the Whole Family
As morel hunting gathers steam as a recreational hobby, ecological concerns surface.
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A closer look at white morels, one of the several morel varieties (see sidebar). Photo courtesy of stock.xchng |
Morels are not a food.
They are more aptly a secret, and a sinful one at that.
When morels are in season, from mid-April to early June, they beckon the obsessed to repeat a frustrating foray into the woods of northern Michigan.
The taste is instantly memorable, simultaneously wild (infused with a nutty, acorn flavor) and luxurious (complementing the flavors of steak and potatoes). Each bite is precious – worth hours of stooped hunting for the whisper of a single morel. After a day of scanning the leaf-covered hillsides, your back hurts and your eyes become attuned only to the triangular hood shape of the fruiting body.
“It becomes an obsession,” said Cassandra Jean Barnett, a morel hunter since the age of five. When she was young, her father would take her with him on his morel-gathering trips. “Some years, for as much as a week, my father lives and breathes morels.”
Too small and too rare to sustain a human in the wilderness, morels operate somewhere between delicacy and addiction. But these petite ghosts of the forest floor may operate on another edge: concerns about habitat encroachment, changing weather and irresponsible harvesting inspire the suspicion that the heydays of the hobby are a thing of the past.
When Campers Encroach
No census has ever been conducted on the precise amount of morel gatherers who come to Michigan each year. Without licensing, an exact figure can’t be determined, but books like “The Morel Hunter’s Companion” by Nancy Smith Weber and Gary Fine’s “Morel Tales” estimate as high as 600,000. Even with numbers half as impressive, the idea of hundreds of thousands of people entering the woods in a small space of time raises ecological concerns.
“Unfortunately, there are a number who fit into the ‘greedy with fever’ category,” said Lorraine Manary, vice president of Boyne City’s Morel Mushroom Festival Committee. “In their search for the elusive morel, they run quad runners and other motorized vehicles through the woods, tearing it up.”
Due to the lack of hotels in the rural wilderness of northern Michigan, many morel gatherers camp, sometimes for several weeks in the same spot. While most are responsible with their refuse, others burn it or leave it behind.
Campers might also be encroaching on the natural habitats of black bears, bobcats and Michigan’s elk herd. This close proximity endangers both the animals and the hunters.
But these temporary invasions are not as troublesome or as damaging to the prime morel hunting areas as is the advance of the real estate market.
Pam Chipman, president of the festival’s planning committee, recollects her most successful outing with a bit of sadness. “I can’t recall now if we picked two or three grocery bags at that one spot,” she said. “I went back to that same area the next year to find the woods completely torn up and a huge sign selling building lots.”
Logging and oil, two major industries in northern Michigan, can be unforgiving to the land morel hunters cherish. The large orange, blue and green dashes of spray paint that indicate which trees are doomed to be removed in the coming year are familiar sites to morel gatherers.
“I have seen a decline of morels in clear-cut areas,” said Robyn Morgan, a morel hunting guide. “We should fear our land use and government more than Dutch elm disease. Clear cutting kills more trees in a faster time frame. Without trees, there will be no more morels.”
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Woody the Morel greets hunters at the annual Boyne City (Mich.) Morel Mushroom Festival. Photo courtesy of Boyne Area Chamber of Commerce |
Even though morels can be found in sand dunes and open meadows, the most abundant yields come in the shade of hardwood trees. Cherry trees, apple orchards and various hardwoods can indicate a favorable place to gather them, but the single consistent detail in any old-timer’s advice will be their partiality toward elms. With Dutch elm disease having ravaged the elm population in the Southeastern
corner of the state, abundant crops have been seen less in an area where morels once thrived.
Reaping and Sowing
But landscape damage and encroachment on natural animal habitats won’t be a problem if morels disappear — a possibility, given the regular decline in morels harvested year to year.
The highly sensitive fungus requires a fairly particular set of conditions to thrive. Weber points to the depletion of nutritive ions in the soil from the advent of acid rain as a factor in the decline of morels and other fungi.
Manary and fellow committee member, treasurer Kim Brown, agree that weather is a major factor in the harvest yield, as morels require warm nights and moisture, but both also agree that irresponsible harvesting plays a role.
“There is a theory that if you pull the stem out of the ground, it will remove the necessary ingredients for the mushroom to grow again next season,” Brown said. “Therefore, it is possible we have over-harvested by not picking properly.”
The life cycle of a morel offers a scientific basis for this theory. During the winter, the underground network of tubules beneath the morel, called the mycelium, shrinks and hardens, forming a unique hibernation structure called a sclerotium. If this structure is lifted out of the ground during the spring harvest, the system could be destroyed and fail to return in following years.
The New Fly-Fishing
“Hunters love to tell stories of long ago about the ‘river’ of morels lining the ground as far as the eye can see,” Brown said. Morel gatherers, like anglers or deer hunters, have a compulsion to exaggerate their find.
“My Grandfather Russell once came upon a meadow of morels,” said Cary Middlebush, a morel hunter. “He found so many at one time that he couldn’t carry them in the bags he brought. This is a story that our family passes down. I don’t know how much of it is just legend.”
Each spring, the hills are inundated with orange-vested families (on account of turkey hunters), some with children, who usually fare best on account of their proximity to the ground. Trails girded by spring trilliums are tramped down and reformed for the first time since the melting of the snow, and the mute softness of wet bark is interrupted by shouts of success. This is the closest thing there is to a morel community: a persistent and patient, morphing mass of vacationing workers and retirees.
“[At the festival,] we have had college professors, doctors and people who travel to Michigan from California, Japan and Australia,” Brown said. “Most have a common love of the outdoors, the ‘thrill of the hunt’ and for learning something about our natural habitat.”
Morel gathering is also popular outside of Michigan. Their natural habitat ranges from the tropics to the boreal forests of Canada. They are found most abundantly in Russia, Austria, Germany, France, Michigan and the Pacific Northwest, where commercial permits are issued to gatherers on a year-to-year basis.
By early June, most morels have become prey to hunters and animals or have dried out and turned into desiccant shells, their plump wrinkles becoming flat and tired.
But given enough moisture, some “white morals” (see sidebar on page 15) survive and blossom into fist-sized protrusions, emerging between leaves. Dedicated late-season hunters can find enough of these to make others jealous, touting photographs of their giant whites.
“I have great memories of my time in the woods,” Barnett said. “I never found nearly as many as my dad, but that was never important."
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