Here's where to find 'em!
by Tom Nauman
"Where did you find those at?"
It's probably the most asked question of successful mushroom hunters. While some may tell you (make sure they look you in the eyes!), most won't. I don't give out my GPS coordinates either. But, I will tell you where I'd look in your woods and I've probably never been there.
We're speaking about morels here and morels have a relationship to dead elms. I have found hundreds of morels that weren't anywhere near any kind of elm, but if you're looking for the mother lode, it'll more than likely be within 30 feet of a dead elm or a patch of dead elms. Dead elms are fairly easy to recognize.
Next time your driving down the road and see a timbered area look from the top of the tree canopy to about half-way to the ground. In Illinois, those trees that are missing their bark and the bare wood is a whitish grey are dead elms. That won't help you much though because you probably don't have permission to hunt there and dead elms that are missing most or all their bark are beyond their mushroom producing days.
The dead elms you need to find are the one's that have passed away in the past couple of years. So now you have to get into the woods. Find the dead elms that are just beginning to lose their bark. The bark usually falls away from the upper limbs first. In fact, some of the smaller upper branches and twigs have fallen. As other trees start to bud, dead elms don't. So another clue is the absence of buds or leaves.
Within a year or two of dying, white speckles appear on the bark of a dead elm. This is the perfect tree! If there aren't any mushrooms near it's base, you're either too early or your wife got there first. If you see where they've been picked, get home quick before she eats them all!
What's the relationship between dead elms and morels? Even the experts don't agree. You have to remember that the spores of morels are everywhere. I believe that as the elm starts to die, the sap runs from the tree back into the root structure, disperses from there into the ground and acts as some kind of super fertilizer to begin the growth cycle for the mushroom. Also remember that from the time the spore starts to grow, it'll be two seasons before mushrooms appear. So the mushroom growth cycle begins before the tree is completely dead.
If that's not complicated enough, let's discuss where the dead elm tree an accompanying morels may be located. If it's early in the season, they will be on the south edge of the timber or on the south facing slope near the top of a hill. The sun warms these areas first. As the season progresses the morels begin appearing further into the woods, further down the south side of the hills, and near the top of the north facing slope. Until finally, near the end of the season, they appear at the north edge of the woods and in the bottomland.
Just when you think you've got all this down pat, Mother
Nature blesses you with several really warm days with about an inch of rain
each day and the mushrooms are running amuck everywhere, wrecking havoc
on every theory every mushroomer ever heard.
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