BOISE, Idaho – Last year’s mild wildfire season in the Northwest may be bad news for commercial mushroom hunters, but hobbyists are already salivating at the thought of spring morels.
More than 8.2 million acres of state and federal lands nationwide burned during the 2005 wildfire season, and mushrooms typically thrive in the year after wildfires. But many of last year’s fires were in grass and rangeland instead of forests, where the mushrooms are most often found.
“Commercial hunters follow the burns, because at peak season they can make $1,000 a day,” said Orson Miller Jr., a prominent mycologist who lives in McCall, Idaho. “They’ll probably be in other states this year.”
Lori Carris, a resident mycologist at Washington State University in Pullman, said would-be mushroom gatherers can find morels even without the forest fires. They just have to know what to look for.
“We can find morels coming up when there’s been construction, or on campus here at WSU in the spring when they put new planting beds around a building or shrubs and wood chips,” she said.
The mushrooms also occur naturally without environmental disruption. Finding those fungus flushes is just a matter of timing, she said.
“I always look for trilliums of calypso orchids in bloom. For the most part, we want the snow to be gone,” she said. “When the trilliums start to turn pink and purple, that’s the end of the morels in that spot.”
Hobbyists who collect enough of the wild mushrooms for dinner and perhaps some extras for drying will likely be in luck this year, Miller said.
“This year looks particularly good because we got quite a bit of moisture in the soil before the freeze up last fall, and that really gives the morels a chance to grow,” Miller said.
Morels are an aromatic fungus with a distinctive cap that looks a bit like a pine cone. They are highly prized by gourmet cooks and fine restaurants and can fetch $30 a pound or more for pickers.
The high prices have led to a competitive commercial picking industry, largely made up of traveling outfits that go from burn site to burn site. For hobbyists, nothing is more frustrating than arriving at a favorite mushroom site only to find it’s already been picked clean by a commercial outfit.
“For mushroom hunting in general, this should be a good year because the commercial picking may be concentrated to a few very small burn areas,” said Genille Steiner of the Southern Idaho Mycological Association.
Marjie Millard, owner of Millard Family Mushrooms in Waldport, Ore., used to travel to burn sites throughout the Northwest to ensure a good spring haul. But these days, she spends most of her time picking in her home state.
“Last year it was Alaska; they had a ton of wildfires up there. People I’ve talked to this year plan on staying closer to home, maybe in Oregon or Washington,” Millard said.
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