Let's Hunt Morel Mushrooms!

[Music] everyone I'm Adam Harrison I'm hanging out in the woods right now reminiscing about morel mushrooms and the reason that I'm reminiscing about them is that it's getting kind of late in the season right now you can see how green everything is around me so for the most part the morel mushroom season is winding down at least where I live overall it was a pretty good season you know it's kind of off to a later start compared to last year but it was a good season and so what I want to do for you in this video is share with you a compilation of a few clips a few encounters that I had with morel mushrooms over the past couple of weeks some of these excursions into the woods were successful some not as successful but I always had a good time so I hope that you have a good time watching this video I hope you have fun and I hope you learn something [Music] it's a beautiful Saturday afternoon I spent the entire day yesterday at a spagna moss workshop today it's a little different because today I'm looking just strictly for morels when I came to a very familiar spot I've been coming to this area for the best six or seven years because for me it's a morel mushroom hot spot all different kinds of morels are associated with this particular area and I really find them underneath black cherry trees right around here I don't always find morel mushrooms associate with black cherry trees right here for some reason the morel mushrooms really seem to like associating with these wild black cherry trees and usually the dying of the dead ones and so the ones that I'm finding today the morel mushrooms are the half-free morel mushrooms this one right here and they got the half-free morel mushroom because the cap isn't attached fully to the stalks if we cut it in half you look at a cross-section of it you'll see that the cap just attaches about halfway and it kind of hangs out like a skirt and like other morel mushrooms this one is entirely hollow inside so this is more cella puncta peas it is a morel mushroom although some people don't consider it to be a morel mushroom but it is and it's placed in the black morel mushroom clade so more cella elata clade and there are three species worldwide of half-free morels we live in eastern North America you have more cella puncta peas they call puncta peas because the stem is studded or Punk baited with these little thoughts we live in Western North America you have more cella popular fella and if you live in Europe you have more chalice semi-live berra and as I said this one is edible just as long as you cook it so finding a lot I just want to show you some of the morel mushrooms at half or anywhere else that I'm finding in this particular area today right there right off the path to half free morel mushrooms Porcello puncta peas two nice sized specimens now it's really interesting is that I walk the same exact area about an hour ago and I didn't see these at all I didn't see any half-free morel mushrooms I saw zero but now for some reason I'm seeing them so something shifted in that past hour I don't know what it was something shifted and now I'm able to see them you could see how the ridges are darkened on this one that's very characteristic for members of the black morel mushroom clade the alotta clade now these are placed in a subclade within that clade which is more Chellis semi-live era subclade which is the half free morel mushroom subclade but they are placed in that larger clade which is the alotta clade and they share many features of other black morel mushrooms even though the cap is only attached halfway to the stock and I can see right here that the stock is studded or pumped ated with these little granules and that's where puncta peas the species name comes from now I got to be mindful of poison ivy if you're susceptible to it so this is poison ivy right there you can see how close it is maybe only eight inches away from these half-free we're all mushroom so if you're susceptible just be very mindful this time of year because it's very easy to overlook something like poison ivy and a half free we're on mushrooms so let's keep looking because I know there's a couple more around here so you can see that nice one right over there with a split cap rate at the base of a black cherry tree more cella puncta peas and right behind it can you see the other one maybe about a foot behind it you can see the copper colored cap just poking up out of those green leaves I'll get a little closer so you can see it right there there's another one with a split stem so now we can see that it's hollow inside and like other members of the more challenging this this one has a completely hollow interior from top to bottom you can see that the ridges are darkened it's got the vertically oriented pits and ridges and the caps and more cella puncta peas right there let me show you one more just to show you what's possible out here this time of year so if we walk maybe ten yards away maybe five yards away I don't think that was ten yards we can see one more right there and this one seems to be a little more dried out so maybe this one started growing a day or two before those other ones so more cella puncta peas that's what six of them so far and there are a bunch more around here but I'll just leave it at that just to show you what's possible out here in these woods this time of year okay so that escalated rather quickly didn't take me too long to fill most of this bag with half-free morels so right when I shut off the camera I kept looking some more I started finding larger and larger specimens and more and more specimens some of these are pretty big then look at this one right here this is about 6 inches tall you see it's completely hollow inside so definitely a nice-sized specimen I think my favorite one is this flat capped one almost looks like a polypore mushroom I don't know why it looks like this and I almost didn't believe that it was a mushroom when I first saw it but this is definitely a half-free morel mushroom I don't know why I developed this way there's nothing sitting on top of it and I found all of these in association with dead or dying black cherry trees Prunus artena and in most of those cases there are large poison ivy vines going up and down those trees so maybe that's where you'll have a lot of luck finding half free morels as well and I definitely didn't harvest them all I left a lot behind maybe 25 to 50% of everything that I found I just left behind some of them were small some of them look fine I know that other foragers might be out here animals might want them and I just want to let this population repopulate itself by being able to sporulate successfully so half free morels what's in this bag lots for dinner tonight and tomorrow all right so I'm back out in the woods on the hunt for morel mushrooms it's been about three days since I found all those half free morels and in the past couple of days I did consume all those they were quite delicious whenever I cooked them up for dinner now we had a couple rainfalls over the past couple of days of high hopes for today and it's been steadily warm so these are prime conditions for finding morel mushrooms I've been in this area before it's a slightly different area compared to where I thought it was half-free morels so let's go see if we can get lucky today so as you can see there's a lot of shrubbery in this particular area a lot of invasive shrubs that are leafing out the deciduous canopy hasn't fully leaved out yet and most of these trees that you're seeing are black cherry trees now there are a couple other tree species mixed in here there's an oak tree in here there's a hickory tree over there there's some fallen ash trees so it's hard to say which tree specifically these morels might be associated with I'm a feeling it's typically the black cherry trees in this area so I've had luck here before around this time let's see if we can find anything garlic mustard is up here there's cleavers some other species as well and oh I think I see a morel mushroom I think I see two you see those two right there one two groan right next to each other it's a nice small cluster of morels these are in the yellow Morel clade which is the sq lenta clade so whenever we talked about the half-free morels those were in the black morel clade they were two subclade that subclade was a semi live era subclade within the allotted clay these are in the sq lenta clade you can see how these ridges are not dark in that maturity they're actually still quite light and if we would look underneath we would see that the cap is fully attached to the stock without a small sinus or a groove typically in the black Morel clay there's at least a slight sinus or a little groove right where the cap meets the stock so these are still quite small I don't know if I'll harvest these ones today but I'll remember this spot maybe I'll come back to it now of course I'll come back to why wouldn't I right over there we got another one there's a nice-size specimen right there much more rounded cap same rail species still in the SQ lent the clade see if there's anything else ah little one this one would be very easy to overlook look how tiny that one is so that one will still continue to grow if I just let it go for a couple more days nice and tiny just growing by itself again in association with all these black cherry trees okay so I kept looking around some more just for a few more minutes in that general area and I didn't see any more of that particular species in the more childhood genus however I kept walking down the path some more and I found a really really large half-free Morel more cella puncta peas the one that I found the other day I just want to show you how large these things can get if you let them grow so check out this one so large you won't even stand upright look at that one quite a large half three morel mushroom actually don't know if I've ever seen one that large it's not uncommon for them to be this large but check out that size you can see that it's half free do you see how that cap is not attached fully to the stock right there you look really closely you'll see that the stock is pumped ated that is a nice looking half free morale mushroom now as I'm headed down this path first thing I notice are all these beautiful wild leeks or ramps look how beautiful these are it's getting a little later in the season but these can still be harvested not a very large patch by any means kind of well self-contained right here but it's always beautiful to see them I didn't notice that this whole hillside is actually full of half-free morels or chela punk tepee some of them don't look so good some of them look great like that one right there that one doesn't look too bad right in the center and right underneath me you see the cap right there poking up we make our way up the hill there's one right here getting all this direct sunlight maybe it's making some vitamin-b at the moment as well so we won't disturb that here's a beautiful on very photogenic right in the middle right there right amongst all the garlic mustard in the jewelweed sprouts anymore yes of course how about that one right there any more yes there are a lot more right underneath the may apples there's one right there and well there's a broken one right there right underneath that rock so we'll just keep our eye on this one as we talk about how easy it is for me to find portela puncta peas this year I don't know why that is but for some reason I'm having a much easier time finding puncta Peas over the SQ line thick clay but that's okay these are still edible just make sure you cook them first cut them in half make sure they're hollow top to bottom the cap should be attached halfway did a stock okay so not a bad day scouting out the land in search of morale mushrooms I found several of the true morel mushrooms way back there up the trail and I found several more of the half-free morels more cella puncta peas i'm gonna harvest several the myrcella puncta peas and probably going to leave those other ones behind and let them grow for another day or two and see how they progress they didn't look like they were fully mature so I'm sure they'll continue to grow for another day or two so not a bad day we'll see what happens in the following couple days when I look for more morel mushrooms okay so I'm back out in the woods it's about a week later and of course I'm looking for morels today and I decided to come to one of my favorite spots because this spot has been pretty prolific in the past this is a spot that typically produces later in the season so I was hold off in this spot and scout out other areas earlier and season mid season as well and then when the season is winding down I come to this particular area that was pretty funny is that about half an hour to 45 minutes ago I was setting up my camera to film then I heard thunder and all the sudden all this rain started coming down more rain than I think I've ever seen in my entire life and it just started raining down upon me I just couldn't get out of it didn't want to go to my car because it's kind of far away so I thought what else am I gonna do out here I'm just going to keep looking for morel mushrooms and I got completely soaked like every inch of my body head to toe is completely soaked right now but I did find a lot of mushrooms and I thought I'm not gonna complain out here even though it's raining the birds aren't complaining the animals aren't complaining the plants aren't complaining the mushrooms aren't complaining so I'm not going to complain either and I was rewarded because I did not complain and I found a lot of morel mushrooms so let me show you some of these mushrooms that I found this is the trail that I was walking along whenever I was getting hammered with rain and I couldn't get any cover not even underneath the canopy because it's not full completely yet so no matter where I went I was getting hammered with rain fortunately though the mushrooms kept me company this is the first one that I saw look at this one right here right off the path and whenever I see mushrooms right alongside the path I can't believe it especially the edible mushrooms I can't believe nobody picked this one right here it doesn't matter what edible mushroom it is if it's alongside the path I always have to question whether somebody did something to it because how can you not see that perfect right there look at the size of this one so this is a Morel in the sq Lent a clade in the yellow morale clade beautiful sized specimen fresh as well so usually as they get larger they can topple over and turn into something like that you can tell that one is a little too mature for me but that one looks to be pretty good so I'll come back for that one and whenever you see one keep looking around because you might find another and look at all these cherry trees right here so again I'm having a lot of luck in the cherry tree patches so if we just backtrack a little bit and if we continue back here through all this oriental bittersweet this plant is highly highly invasive here in Pennsylvania we find one right there that one got kind of ripped off on the top in the bottom but it still looks to be pretty fresh so that one can still be harvested and right there and all that vinca minor and aggressive ground cover in Pennsylvania we've got another morel mushroom in back there and if you could see it can you see it all the way back there there's another one let's go check that one out perfect how about that not too bad look at this nice little cluster of them one two three and there's one back under there see that one down there in the center it's a nice one right there there's one right there let's keep going because there might be more and oh yeah there are look at that oh I see three in there one two three there's probably more I'm not the bushwhack through there because I see at least three more in there so let's bushwhack in here just a little bit ah two right here one two what else do we see if we go back here look at that one right there these are all the same species on the sqn two clade and of course we got that one I can barely be seen but there's one right over there and all this multiflora rose it's hard to get in and out of if we just back up just a little bit there's one in there and there's three great specimens one two three now if you saw any more when I was walking around let me know because it's hard for me to film and look from rails at the same time oh here we go check out that right there perfect okay so I think I'm gonna stop in this particular area and keep looking along the trail because when I was stuck in the rain I was primarily sticking to the trail didn't really come back in here too much so let's go see what else we can find okay I think I like just a little bit because I found a couple more as those backtracking out of this multi-floor rose so right there one more there's another one in there these are all new ones I'm not showing you and he repeats here I promise right there and that's gonna be hard to see so let's get in there do you see that one back in there just the cap right there so there's probably a lot more in here and I could spend I don't know another good hour or two just this pot looking but I'm gonna continue down the path because I did see more down there now I'm about 300 yards down the path I had to walk pretty far I wasn't really finding much before all this but I wanted to stop here because this is a good spot so look at that one coming right up out of the geom or the avens plant there's one all the way in there there's a lot more in this spot so let's just keep looking around let's take your time at this there's one it's another one these are all the same species that I found earlier all in the sq lenta clade you can tell because the cap isn't darken especially at the ridges and the cap is completely attached to the stock there is no sinus or little groove right underneath there and walk over here so this is autumn olive right here it smells very very fragrant and it produces edible berries again like most US plants we're ready to discuss this one is highly highly invasive but there's no denying that it kind of smells pretty good right now and underneath all of this is a Morel patch so there's a Morel right there and there is a Morel right there and all the way in here I don't know how far I'm gonna get in here without stepping on a bunch of these let's see how far we can take this so check out that one right there there's one back there do you see it can't really get too close to that one and there's one more right in there nice little one so these will continue to grow I might leave these ones behind and harvest some of those bigger ones that I saw a little earlier okay so how about that this is probably the most successful day I've had so far this season it's been the most successful day I've had in a long time you know the conditions were perfect this was a really good spot to begin with but it's been rainy the past couple of days it's been really moist the soil temperatures are warming up and so I had a good feeling that we would find morel mushrooms today of this particular species so this is an SQL antic later the yellow Morel clade and I'm still finding more I just didn't want to show you any more because I think you get the point this is a pretty good area for morel mushrooms this is a good time of year to look for these morel mushrooms and even if it's raining outside keep looking as long as it's safe because you may be rewarded and I was rewarded because I just kept looking and looking looking didn't give up I knew they were out here and look what we found we found a bunch of these today so not a bad day from around mushroom hunting [Music] okay so this is just a few encounters that I had with morel mushrooms over the past couple of weeks and I did find more on other adventures into the woods I just didn't document the experience and so I'm wondering how was your morel mushroom season it was a pretty good was it not so good that you find a lot did you not find a lot how was it for you I'd love to hear about it you could leave a comment down below and let me know thanks so much for watching this video as always I truly appreciate it feel free to subscribe to the learn your land YouTube channel if you want to stay in touch head on over to learn your land comm you can sign up for the email newsletter or follow me on social media at lawyer'll and thanks again for watching this video I'll see you [Music] you

Channel: Learn Your Land

Views: 456,031

Keywords: Adam Haritan, Learn Your Land, Mushroom, Mushrooms, Fungi, Fungus, Mycology, Morel, Morels, Morel Mushrooms, Morchella, Gyromitra, Verpa, Botany, Foraging, Wild Food, Wild Edibles, Medicinal Mushrooms, Gardening, Outdoors, Hiking, Primitive Skills, Nature, Woods, Pennsylvania, Wild Foodism, Camping, Park, Forest

Id: WvEWsojLaUk

Length: 20min 59sec (1259 seconds)

Published: Tue May 29 2018