Fungi – Learn Your Land

Good Morel Habitat Vs. Bad Morel Habitat

Adam Haritan — Tue, 25 Mar 2025 13:39:48 +0000

Years ago, I didn’t know anything about morel mushrooms. I didn’t know what they looked like. I didn’t know how they tasted. I didn’t even know they existed. Then one day I attended a mushroom program with a local club. Experts in the club introduced me to morels. “Here’s what morels look like,” they said. […]

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Preseason Morel Mushroom Hunting Tips

Adam Haritan — Thu, 30 Jan 2025 17:53:39 +0000

If you want to find morel mushrooms this year, here’s a tip: don’t wait until spring to begin your hunt. This might sound like unconventional advice. After all, current temperatures are too cold for morels. Wood frogs haven’t even bred yet. Spring is still another 50 days away. All these things are true. But this […]

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What Happened To American Elm?

Adam Haritan — Wed, 16 Oct 2024 13:15:22 +0000

Decades before Freddy Krueger became a pop culture icon, a different kind of nightmare terrorized Elm Streets in North America. In the 1920s, a lethal disease known as Dutch elm disease appeared in the United States. This fungal disease was first detected in the Netherlands and quickly spread to other countries. Town officials tried to […]

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Foraging The Delicious Edible Cauliflower Mushroom

Adam Haritan — Thu, 19 Sep 2024 14:13:13 +0000

Forests are teeming with connections of all kinds. Nothing in a forest exists in isolation. Take the cauliflower mushroom (Sparassis spathulata), for instance. This edible mushroom grows in association with certain trees. To find the cauliflower mushroom, it only makes sense to explore ecosystems where these trees grow. During a recent hike, I discovered a […]

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Why I’ll Probably Never Eat This Mushroom

Adam Haritan — Tue, 10 Sep 2024 13:51:55 +0000

“Is it edible?” This question constantly runs through the forager’s mind. As it turns out, the answer isn’t always a simple yes or no, particularly regarding wild mushrooms. Some mushrooms are choice edibles. Some mushrooms are toxic raw. Some mushrooms are toxic no matter how thoroughly you cook them. But there’s another category of mushrooms: […]

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Advice On Finding Morel Mushrooms

Adam Haritan — Thu, 18 Apr 2024 14:07:57 +0000

“Let it be still, and it will gradually become clear.” To the best of my knowledge, Lao Tzu wasn’t a mycologist, but his famous text — the Tao Te Ching — could be considered a treatise on how to find morel mushrooms. Reading the quote above, we are reminded that our desperation to find morels […]

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Identifying Trees Without Looking Up

Adam Haritan — Mon, 16 Oct 2023 14:13:47 +0000

Conventional ways of doing things aren’t always the most effective ways of doing things. Take tree identification, for instance. We might think that we have to strain our necks in order to identify trees. If we don’t look up into the canopy, how else are we supposed to learn? We can look down instead. When […]

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How To Find Mushrooms In Dry Weather

Adam Haritan — Mon, 19 Jun 2023 13:59:18 +0000

Any forager will tell you that mushrooms are abundant when rainfall is plentiful. The reason for this correlation is simple: fungi love water. Nearly every stage in the life cycle of a fungus requires water — from spore germination, to nutrient uptake, to reproduction, to spore dispersal. But water isn’t always plentiful. Sometimes it’s scarce. […]

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Chicken Of The Woods On Conifer — Toxic?

Adam Haritan — Thu, 18 May 2023 14:10:28 +0000

Tree identification is an excellent skill to learn if you are interested in foraging mushrooms. Many edible mushrooms grow in association with trees. When you learn the basics of tree identification, your understanding of fungal ecology improves. One popular mushroom that grows in association with trees is chicken of the woods (genus Laetiporus). Despite its […]

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What Field Guides Don’t Tell You About Mushrooms

Adam Haritan — Mon, 13 Feb 2023 17:26:28 +0000

Gary Lincoff said something interesting to me 8 years ago. We were sitting at a picnic table during a mushroom foray in Pennsylvania. He just finished giving a presentation on edible mushrooms and agreed to sit down for an interview. My plan was to ask him several questions about his life as a mycologist. The […]

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Find This Mushroom, Find More Morels

Adam Haritan — Thu, 15 Dec 2022 17:11:08 +0000

Nature is full of signs. Tracks, pellets, and clouds reveal information to the astute observer who pays attention. Nothing is meaningless when awareness is practiced. Every track, tree, and titmouse means something. So it goes with mushrooms. Every mushroom relays information to the person who pays attention. As an example, consider velvet foot (Flammulina velutipes) […]

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12 Mushrooms That Grow In Your Yard

Adam Haritan — Tue, 28 Sep 2021 13:55:14 +0000

The best mushroom books aren’t always mushroom-related. Take the Tao Te Ching, for instance. This piece of Chinese philosophical literature was written approximately 2,500 years ago. The word “mushroom” is not mentioned anywhere in the text, but the Tao Te Ching might be one of the best mushroom books I have ever read. To see […]

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