Morel Season 2021
In the fall of 2020, Oregon, and especially the Willamette Valley experienced some of the worst wildfires in recorded history. We watched as the skies downwind of the million+ acre fires turned red, and darkened the sun even at noon. Our air quality was so bad, that it was hazardous to go outside for over 10 days. As our forests burned, communities lost their homes, livelihoods and lives because of lack of warning and scary conditions.
My local forests, places I had been going for a couple years, learning how to forage and connect with nature, were now all burned. I had expressed to my study group through all of this how sad I was. The first time I drove down Hwy 22 to see the aftermath, I cried. It felt like I had lost someone close to me and I was in mourning.
My friend Jordan and our resident “Morel guy” and I, began early spring with hopes of learning more about fungi after a burn. We emailed the Willamette National Forest with plans to study the succession of fungi especially in the valley or the west side of the cascades. As a study group we were interested in what comes back first after such an intense fire. Unfortunately we were never granted access. Instead, the Willamette National Forest closed all public access. In march we began hearing stories of looting and stricter closures, and finally severe fines and threats of jail time if caught in the woods. So we began to look to other parts of Oregon, mostly the east side of the Cascades and started scouting for what we thought was going to be a stellar Morel Season.
Jordan and I had grand plans of bringing WVMS members on group forays, the first activity since COVID shut everything down, and with vaccine rates ever increasing through the spring, we were hopeful that we would be able to bring everyone out for some amazing finds. We started scouting at lower (3000 ft) elevations at the end of March and did’t find anything. We thought we were too early. Keeping an eye out on iNaturalist for posts of Morels or the indicator species like Sarcosphaera coronaria and Geopyxis carbonaria, but did not see any in Oregon. We kept scouting. Driving three hours through 40 mile per hour zones, where logging trucks clogged the highway as they cut burned and hazardous trees during the weekdays. We listened to reports of inexperienced arborists taking down trees that would have survived, and the scandals that erupted over the closures of our burned forests. We watched as people snuck into the burned forests to collect baskets of Morels only to get caught, given a fine and told to dump their hauls.
But we kept coming up with empty baskets.
As soon as the snow melted in mid April we started scouting the higher elevations around 4000+ ft at the Green Ridge Burn in Deschutes National Forest. This burn was started by a lightning strike in the fall of 2020 and burned some places so hot that there was nothing left except black charcoal spires on an ashy moonscape of ground. Jordan brought his thermometer to see what the ground temperature was, as it needs to be about 50 degrees a few inches from the top soil to begin fruiting mushrooms. We were there too early, the temperatures were not right. We hiked all over noticing no fungi and no real plant rejuvenation. So decided to come back later.
We had a foray to lead so we decided to take everyone to the Camp Sherman area where I had found 3 2nd year burn Morels next to the wild strawberries. I had collected those specimens for the Pezizales study headed by Dr. Matthew Smith from the University of Florida. Rosanne Healy, my contact, had encouraged me to submit fresh samples of the Ascomycetes we found during the season. So I carefully photographed, described, sectioned and loaded up my observations on iNaturalist before sending her the specimens. I am still waiting to hear about the sequencing results on those, and am excited to see what I found.
On one of our last trips for the season to the eastern side of the Cascades, Andrew, my partner and I led a foray to the Green Ridge Burn. We led a couple through the forest following greener, moister patches of less-burned forest. We found a handful of Morels and some other fungi. One of the most prolific was the Cryptoporus vulvatus, growing on charred trees, looking like mini golden brown dinner rolls. The bugs had already bored their holes in them, and had made homes in the empty cavity below the pore surface. These fungi have an interesting relationship with bugs and trees. You can find them on conifer trees in urban areas and in forests. A really large fruiting of them will look like the tree trunk has chicken-pox!
Andrew focused on finding the morels while we were out foraging. He bypassed the trees with their bug infested fruiting, without a second glance and kept his eyes glued to the ground looking for the bit of disturbance and the sign of the camouflaged mush-hump. He did it! As he called over our foraging guests to acclimate their eyes to the morels, he stepped to the side and looked down to find the largest Morel we had ever seen. This Monster Morel weighed 8.7 oz and made us all stop in awe of the wondrous find.
We never found more than a handful of Morels in all of the trips out, but that one Monster Morel was so worth it. It will go down as one of our favorite mushroom stories even though the 2021 Morel season was a disappointment.
Art of the Day
“Last Morel of the Season” digital photograph by Autumn Anglin
