Morel Mushrooms Popping Up In VA: When To Find Springtime Delicacy

VIRGINIA — If you consider morel mushrooms one of the greatest delicacies of spring, prepare to salivate and get out the frying pan. The elusive morels are in Northern Virginia woods right now.

Keep in mind, there’s only a small window of opportunity to find morel mushrooms as we move toward warmer temperatures. A good place to start the hunt is with The Great Morel’s interactive morel sightings map, which collects morel mushroom sightings by state, city and ZIP code, as well as the date found.

In Northern Virginia, morel hunters started spotting the treasures around April 12. "Cool, dry for 5 days, on the cusp of our usual peak in the 3rd week of April," said a Leesburg hunter on April 18.

"Temps in the 40s, found in tulip poplar forest after a big rain," a McLean fan posted April 12.

Folks in Maryland and Virginia are most apt to find morels in April through May, according to Outdoor Life.

If you’ve never experienced these earthy, woodsy and nutty tastes of spring, don’t turn down an invitation to partake in their deliciousness. Just don’t ask too many questions about where the mushrooms were found. Morel aficionados are notoriously secretive about the best spots to poke around in the woods, lest anyone else discover the source of the mother lode.

Folklore is spun around the morels — really, just decaying fungi that pop out of the ground under just the right fusion of atmospheric conditions and pollen counts — because they’re so elusive, and because those who hunt them are so protective of the location of prime spots.

Even seasoned foragers are often disappointed. One year might produce a bumper crop of morels and, the next year, the same spot can be fallow. The morel whisperers at The Great Morel may not be able to pinpoint exactly where to find the woodsy, earthy spring delights, but they do offer mushroom hunters a crowd-sourced map to help determine when the spores are likely to start popping.

States in the South and Southeast saw morels popping in February and March. So far in April, morels have been found in 143 places, including a surprise find in Robert Lee, Texas.

Right now, most morels are being found widely across the eastern two-thirds of the country and along the West Coast.

Weather patterns have everything to do with the timing of morel mushroom season. Prime mushroom hunting time is usually over by Mother’s Day, which is on Sunday, May 14, this year.

Hunting mushrooms isn’t just a folksy tradition. It’s an opportunity to make some quick cash. Morels are so prized, they can sell for commercially for around $30 a pound. In some cases, they can fetch hundreds of dollars a pound. Fresh morels found in the Pacific Northwest were going for more than $400 a pound from one company on Tuesday.

The Food Network gets positively weepy over morel mushrooms. Alex Guarnaschelli of “Iron Chef” called them the “sacred mushroom,” wrote food author Simon Majumdar, who said mention of morel mushrooms “will bring a look of appreciation to every chef” he encounters.

“The morel, or morchella, is actually more related to the truffle than it is to other mushrooms and, like truffles, is the fruit of a fungus that sprouts in the moist soil of woods and forests,” Majumdar wrote. “There are debates about the number of different types of morel, but the most common ones are black morels and yellow morels. They both have a stem and a conical body that is covered with pits and ridges like a honeycomb, which makes them instantly recognizable to anyone who spends time hunting for them.”

Morel mushrooms are used heavily in French cooking, but the most common among morel cooking methods in the United States is to dip the mushrooms in egg, dredge the mushrooms in flour or seasoned bread crumbs or crackers, and fry them in butter.

Before You Head Into The Woods …

Mushrooms are typically found from March to May. Morels prefer certain habitats, for example near the base of dead or dying elm trees or around ash, tulip and old apple trees. Experienced hunters also report finding them in areas around washes, downed trees or logging areas, old flood plains, and burn sites.

The website Mushroom Appreciation offers morel hunting tips. After nighttime low temperatures warm up to 40 degrees or above, head out into the woods on a warm morning after a spring rain.

The big thing to know before heading out is how to recognize the difference between an edible morel and a poisonous false morel that can make you sick or even kill you. This page has everything you need to know about morel mushroom identification.

No matter how tempting, “don’t pick every mushroom you see,” the site suggests. “Leave a few, so they can continue to drop spores and you and others can enjoy them for years to come.”

Also, be sure to take along a map, compass and a phone with GPS tracking. While practicing safe social distancing, it’s also a good idea to take along a friend. Mace or pepper spray is a good idea, too, in case you run into a moose, bear or dog taking exception to you tromping around the woods.

Mushroom Appreciation cautions against coming right out and asking hunters where precisely to find morel mushrooms, though.

“If you have superior charm and people skills, you might try asking about local morels in a roundabout and modest way,” the site advises. “Just beware that you may not get the desired response, or you may wind up with directions to the local haunted forest!”

The Great Morel is accepting reports of morel sightings through its website, or by emailing them to sightings@thegreatmorel.com with the ZIP code, city, state and date found, along with any other helpful information, such as weather conditions. Don’t worry — the exact location where hunters found the morels is sacrosanct.