Good Morels

The other evening David Y. popped in here carrying a milk jug with a hole cut into it above the shoulder. "I brought you some mushrooms," he said. The morels were sliced open and floating in salt water.

"I never even thought of this being mushroom time," I exclaimed.

"This is getting toward the end of the season," he informed me, "and they're getting bigger. We've been eating a lot and we still have some in the refrigerator."

Last night his mother told me that David and Walter and perhaps others had found almost a garbage bag full yesterday afternoon. In this community, I think David is probably on his way to earning the title of Kansas Mushroom Hunting King.

When David's parental family moved here from Missouri, others told them that morels don't grow here. It's a good thing they didn't believe those people. I first learned that David was on the prowl for mushrooms when he brought me some huge mushrooms to identify so he could figure out if they were edible or not. I had never seen the like, but found out what they were, and told him. (I can't remember the name, unfortunately.) We couldn't confirm that they were edible, so out they went. The good part was that David learned then that I grew to love eating mushrooms when I lived in Ohio, and others took me into the woods to look for them. Dale, one of the local Ohio mushroom kings, used to share some with us teachers, and his mother told us how to prepare them. Slice them open and soak them in salt water to float out the bugs. Then drain and rinse them, salt them again, dredge them in flour and fry them in butter.

Morels are a woodland mushroom, so it's no wonder that generations of prairie-landers here are ignorant of the presence and pleasures of morels among us. Those who know where to look for them are understandably not eager to divulge their whereabouts, and those of us who know a bit about mushrooming protocol are respectful enough not to badger them.

I have never found a morel in Kansas. I'm obviously not as resourceful and observant as David, but neither do I routinely tromp over wild places in the course of hunting game and fishing as he does. Frequenting wooded areas reveals a different population of both plants and animals than plains dwelling flora and fauna. But these forested places, by and large, are found along waterways and in a few overgrown pastures.

Ungrazed pastures used to grow only grass, but several invasive trees have begun to populate these neglected places--Siberian Elm, Osage Orange, Black Locust, Catalpa, Russian Olive, Mulberry, and Eastern Redcedar are the most common. Cottonwood and willow are native and have grown along waterways for centuries. All this to say that our natural landscape, and even our climate is slowly changing. The air is often more humid than it was earlier. Trees draw far more moisture out of the ground and release it into the air than grasses do. And more water is pumped onto the surface through large-scale field irrigation. Some years, like this one, we have so much rain that it would be a crying shame to miss out on the mushroom-growing benefits of this changing scene.

Old timers can be forgiven for thinking this isn't a likely mushroom growing place. That's because it didn't used to be that. But I, for one, am glad that Missouri imports know a mushroom hunting paradise when they find it. Since then, once a year at least, they and we have been eating rich.