Early Season Scouting For Morel Mushrooms

[Music] greetings everyone I'm Adam Harrison and I'm spending all day in the woods today and I thought I'd bring you along as I scout out some old areas and some new areas for morel mushrooms now you might be wondering to yourself wait a minute don't you live in Pennsylvania isn't it a bit early to find morel mushrooms and you're absolutely correct I do live in western Pennsylvania and it is a bit early to find morel mushrooms so I'm filming this early to mid-march and in Pennsylvania I think the earliest sightings of morel mushrooms would be the last week of March if not the first week of April but a lot of people really look for morel mushrooms in Pennsylvania mid April through about mid to late May so it's definitely early I do not expect to find morel mushrooms today but I want to scout out some areas in advance to make sure I still have access to these areas and to make sure that the conditions are still optimal and I want to show you some of the things that I'm looking for and if I do show you footage of morel mushrooms it's going to be footage from years past so if you're somebody who's never found a morel mushroom before and you are looking for your first morel mushroom this year if you're looking for new spots you have a couple spots but you're looking for more you want to see what I'm looking for then you might find this video valuable so without any further introduction on my part let's go explore some potential morel mushroom hotspots [Music] [Music] [Applause] [Music] okay when you're looking for morel mushrooms you often hear that you got to check when soil temperatures are between a certain window and that window would be between 45 to 50 degrees Fahrenheit that seems to be pretty accurate right now the soil temperatures here in this particular spot in western Pennsylvania are about 38 degrees Fahrenheit so again it's a little cold a little early and that is to be expected I should wait a couple of weeks before I expect to find morel mushrooms but over the ten-year average in this particular area on this day the ten-year average is 32 degrees Fahrenheit so we're above average meaning we might see morel mushrooms a little earlier than normal now I really like this spot because this one consistently produces morel mushrooms almost every year and I found this spot not by doing any research or knowing what trees were in this area I literally just came here got out of my vehicle started walking around and within 10 to 15 minutes started finding morel mushrooms and sometimes that's just the way it is sometimes you just have beginner's luck because this is one of the first spots that I ever did find and I just made note of it in almost every year that a-half come back I found morel mushrooms I also like this area because I find three different morel mushrooms in this area sometimes I go to a spot I only find one morel mushroom eating one species or sometimes I'll get lucky find two different species but depending on the time of the year I'll find three different ones and I say time of the year because I think the first one that appears in this area I haven't seen any other ones appear first but the black morel more chilling gusts this step seems to appear first I haven't seen any others appear before that one so I'll say more chela and Gustav steps of black morel appears around here in western Pennsylvania the second week of April in this spot but I've heard reports that the last weekend of March if not the first week of April people are finding black morels so that one typically appears first then I'll find another mushroom in that black morel clade which is more cella puncta peas the half free morel some people don't think that's a true morel mushroom it is a true morel mushroom or cella puncta peas that one appears maybe a week after the black morel but there is overlap between the two and then we'll start to see once the soil temperatures warm up more the yellow Morelle more cella americana some people call that the blonde Morelle so we start to see morel mushrooms here mid to late april all the way to the first or second week of May and depending on the environmental conditions if it's rainy if it's mild we'll see a lot of fruiting Zand I also like this spot because there's a lot of cool wildflowers and a lot of cool plants that appear on this hillside now why would those three morels appear here and you don't find three different species in other areas or you only find one species or no species I don't really know maybe it has something to do with the trees and I'm seeing four main trees on this particular slope so I'm seeing black cherry trees a lot of black cherry trees a lot of mature black cherry trees living and dead that could have something to do with the morel mushrooms here I'm seeing some dead ash trees some big dead ash trees we don't really have big living a sh trees here in Pennsylvania because of the emerald ash borer so the ash trees could have something to do with morels there seems to be an association I'm seeing some red maple trees I don't think there's any association between those red maple trees and the morel mushrooms but another tree that I think has an association with these morels would be the hickory trees I'm seeing some hickory trees not a lot of mature ones some young ones and some medium aged hickory trees I'm seeing the bitter nut or the yellow bud hickories these are very easy to identify in the winter because they have buds that are yellow and very fragrant hence why some people call them yellow buds but they're also called bitter nut because the nuts tend to be bitter but the oil is absolutely delicious if you can make oil from the bitter nut hickory trees so those three trees I'm also seeing the red maple those three trees might have something to do with all these morel mushrooms and I'm finding in this area I'm also seeing a lot of spicebush but the spicebush probably doesn't have anything to do with the morel mushroom so if you have an area that has the cherry trees the ash trees maybe you're seeing some hickory trees as well then you might have the good fortune of finding a lot of morel mushrooms in that particular spot when the soil temperatures warm up to between 45 to 50 degrees Fahrenheit so let's keep looking around see if we can find some other potential hot spots for morel mushrooms okay so right here might not seem like the most ideal habitat for morel mushrooms because it's kind of like a meadow log grass and right over there is an edge habitat with a lot of spent stocks from last summer and last autumn a lot of goldenrod a lot of ash there's a lot of brambles as well so very difficult to maneuver through but I'm wondering if perhaps back in there you see those tall straight trees they're all relatively on the same species I'm wondering if in a couple of weeks there might be morel mushrooms back in there based on that tree species I think I know what it is so let's go take a walk back into there and see why there might be morel mushrooms in there in a couple of weeks compared to this area right here okay so I've pushed through the brush and I'm really glad that I did because I'm now in an area that I did explore about two years ago and I did not find morel mushrooms here but I'm scouting it out again because I think I should be finding morel mushrooms here as long as I time it perfectly to be super tall straight trees that you see all around me there dozens of them on this hillside leading down into a wetland area these are tulip trees or tulip poplar or yellow poplar Lehrer dendron tulip ephra and I think what was going on two years ago is that you know I found black morels in that first spot that I showed you which was about a mile away that was the second to third week of April but it's been my experiences over the years that tulip trees seemed to produce morels later in the season at least here in western Pennsylvania so late April through early May to mid May so some of the last morels to appear seem to be associated with these tulip trees so this year I'm going to try to push it back a little bit and explore this area later in the season hoping to find morel mushrooms but I just wanted to make sure that these trees were still here wasn't logged out or anything that I could still access this area you know there's a lot of still grass in this area it's an invasive grass that just completely takes over but during morel season you don't see a lot of it you just see the dried stalks from last year but by summer by fall i really wouldn't be able to get into here without worrying about you know too much brush or a lot of ticks in this area so these trees tulip poplar trees or yellow poplar these are very easy to identify because they're very tall they're very straight there's some of the tallest straightest deciduous trees in eastern North America they grow all over Eastern North America from New England all the way down to Florida they've got ridged bark they've got beautiful flowers you can see signs of them down below without even looking around because sometimes you'll see these feed remnants or these remnants from these fruit capsules they're very long they're very straight and if you see a bunch of these that means there are tulip trees in the area now the morel mushrooms that I find associated with the tulip trees aren't the black morels but there are two in particular I typically find more chela americana the yellow morel or the blonde morel associated with these trees but i also find another one that i didn't mention yet which is more chela diminutive a-- and I find more cella Damini Teva to be associated with tulip trees more so than any other morel species that I found but that's just been my experience and they're called more cella Damini Teva because of the smaller size this is typically what I'm looking for stands of tulip trees not just one not just two but stands of them if you would see a 360 view of this entire area you would count 50 maybe 60 tulip trees all of decent size as well so you could see the size of this one it's a medium sized tree you know these will grow to be 50 to 100 feet tall here in Pennsylvania that's the average size I think the tallest in Pennsylvania is 158 feet if you get down into the southern United States Southeast United States specifically in the Great Smokies you will see tulip trees up to 170 feet tall even greater because they can grow up to 200 feet tall they can live to be between 250 to 300 years old you don't really see a lot of saplings of tulip trees here in Western PA just because of the heavy deer browse and there's a lot of deer sign in this area as I walk around I can see a lot of deer sign and so it doesn't surprise me that I don't see a lot of the saplings around here and tulip trees are considered to be facultative upland species meaning they usually occur in non wetland areas but occasionally you'll find them in wetland areas at least here in the Northeast and there's a wetland all the way down there but this is a slope leading down to that wetland area so it's no surprise that I'm seeing a lot of these tulip trees so again I'm going to check this spot later in the season hoping to find some morel mushrooms so long as the rains are very generous to us and maybe I'll see some more chela to menu Teva along with more cella americana maybe I'll see another morel species not quite sure but it's good to be back in this area because I haven't been here in two years I'm glad I could still make it in the brush hasn't completely taken over and we'll see what happens in a couple of weeks but if you have an area where you see a lot of tulip trees check those spots especially mid to late morel season for you and you may have the good fortune of finding a bunch of morel mushrooms let's go see if we can find another spot [Music] okay so now I'm in a completely different area I drove about 15 miles finally arrived here this is a spot that I've been coming to for a couple of years the only last year that I really hunted for morel mushrooms and I did have luck now there are a couple different micro habitats within this general area there's one down there it's a floodplain area which I'm going to explore in a couple of minutes but before we go down there right behind the camera is an old homestead like area you could tell because there are some trees that do signify that perhaps there was a homestead there not too long ago within the past century and in those particular areas we can probably find some morel mushrooms and I'll tell you why just a couple of seconds so let's start with that place over there then we'll work our way back to the floodplain area and talk about how to find where all mushrooms in these particular habitats okay so this is a spot that I just stumbled upon last year I was walking up and down this Creek and I decided to go off trail a little bit found some open areas worked my way through some of the brush and I encountered an old apple orchard so this is an old apple tree this is a pretty old tree right here you can see how gnarly it is and perhaps you've heard that morels are associated with apple trees and that's true I tend to find many more ELLs in association with apple trees I tend to find the yellow morels and the half-free morels in association with apple trees I don't find too many black morels in association with these trees but maybe your experiences differ so I mentioned that this was an old homestead area and there are signs that this area was developed more recently compared to the floodplain area you could just tell they're a bunch of pioneer species around here these are the species that tend to come up after an area has been cleared and they take advantage of scarce resources and they grow quite rapidly so I'm seeing some black walnut trees I'm seeing some black birch trees I'm seeing some black locust trees and of course I'm seeing these apple trees which were probably planted here within the past century now personally I'm not one to make apple orchards my go-to place my go-to hot spot for morel mushroom harvesting if I stumble across an apple orchard I'll look briefly for morel mushrooms but I don't go out of my way for the apple orchards and perhaps you've heard that there are some safety concerns regarding the foraging of morel mushroom in areas where there are apple trees old apple orchards and that's because throughout the early 1900's it was a recommended practice by the USDA to apply pesticides lead arsonate pesticides to combat something called the coddling moth which was destroying apple orchards and because lead and arsenic do not break down too easily in a soil those contaminants still persist in the soil today and they'll probably persist for a very long time and there was a preliminary study conducted about a decade ago showing that there are statistically significant positive correlations between the lead in the soil and led in morel mushrooms in apple orchards and arsenic in the soil and arsenic in the morel mushrooms in apple orchards and so it might not be that wise to just forage from wells in old apple orchards and eat a lot of those year after year after year after year after year because those contaminants can build up in your system so that's why I don't make this my go-to spot however if I do find somewhere else in association with apple trees I'll probably Forge some of them so if you find old apple orchards go look for morel mushrooms see if they're growing underneath there but just keep in mind that they could be contaminated with higher than normal levels of lead and arsenic it's not to say you can't have a couple of them every single year but if you pound them year after year after year after year after year who knows what that could do to your system so I tend to not harvest too many or even look under apple orchards because I don't want to get too tempted I'll see what's coming up here in a couple of weeks and if I find some real mushrooms maybe I'll harvest a couple so let's go look at the other place that I was alluding to a little earlier ok so the last habitat that I'll show you is about 100 yards away from the apple orchard this is the floodplain area that it referred to a little earlier so you can see it's the plain that's a little above this fast flowing stream right here this is a good area to find morels in because of a tree species that typically grows in these wetland type habitats and a tree would be the American elm tree Ulmus Americana this is an elm tree right here it's actually kind of fused to this tree right here this is not an American elm apey about this piece and in a second this is not an American but this is an American elm right here so there are two straddling that other species and morels seem to grow an association with American elm trees many people have a lot of luck finding morels in association with elm trees and all miss Americana is considered to be a facultative wetland species meaning it typically grows in association with wetland type habitats sometimes you'll find it in non wetland areas maybe the slopes leading down to the wetlands remember there was another tree we talked about earlier which was almost the opposite was the facultative upland species which was Lirio dendron tulip if era the tulip poplar that one typically grows in upland habitats but occasionally it'll grow in wetland habitats so almost americana I talk about this in many many videos you probably sick of me talking about almost americana but we don't see a lot of larger trees these days because Dutch elm disease takes them away from us so we see the smaller ones we see the medium-sized trees a good tip with American elm trees is you want to look for the dead or dying elm trees look around and you may have a good fortune of finding morel mushrooms now the other species that's right next to it is this one right here and right here you can see the bark just fluffing off so what tree is that well that's the American Sycamore platanus occidentalis now to me this is an indicator species because this one typically grows in floodplain areas it grows all up and down eastern North America tends to form more pure stands in the southern part of its range and up north it tends to be replaced by silver maples in the floodplain areas but I see a lot of this here in Pennsylvania now some people claim that they find morels growing underneath the Sycamores where there are no elm trees nearby if you have an area where there are pure Sycamore stands maybe look underneath them during the height of morel mushroom season and you may have the good fortune of finding morels in association with them but personally here in Western PA I tend to think of them more as indicator species for the Ulmus Americana the elm trees which have morel mushrooms typically growing underneath them as long as they're dying in the dead elm these ones are a little young right here I wouldn't expect to find too many morels here but I'll walk up and down here a third week of April the fourth week and then probably the first two weeks of May probably every other day or at least a couple times a week because you never know when they are going to pop and I actually haven't really explored this area so this is a pretty new area for me but I'm excited to get in here in a couple of weeks and see what kind of mushrooms I'll find growing in association with these streets okay so I think that's all the areas that I'll show you today it's been a full day for me I started very early this morning it's late afternoon right now the Sun is definitely beating down on me it's getting warmer which means these soils are getting warmer as well but it is still a little too cold I did not expect to find a single morel mushroom today and we did not find anywhere all mushrooms today but I hope you still learned a lot and I hope it could use a lot of this information to your advantage whenever you go out and look for morel mushrooms whenever the soil temperatures warm up but don't be afraid to go out right now and just get familiar with some of these spots you know we talked about the cherry trees the ash trees the hickory trees we talked about the tulip trees we talked about some of the apple orchards and then we finished off in this floodplain area with sycamore trees in American elm trees these are by no means the only habitats where morel mushrooms grow just some of the spots that I like to get into this is what they look like and hopefully you have a lot of luck this year and hopefully I have a lot of luck this year as well we'll see in a couple of weeks thanks so much for watching this video as always I truly appreciate it if you've been watching my videos for some time and I encourage you to subscribe to the learner land YouTube channel if you haven't done so already we can also stay in touch via the email newsletter you can sign up at learn your land calm and if you're on social media on Facebook and Instagram you can give me a follow I'm at learn your land on Facebook and on Instagram thanks again for watching this video and I'll see you on the next one [Music] you [Music]

Channel: Learn Your Land

Views: 184,767

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Id: HiTtn7W7zyA

Length: 19min 46sec (1186 seconds)

Published: Thu Mar 12 2020