Summer offers great opportunity to hunt morels

Here in the Show-Me State, wild mushrooms and morels are synonymous terms.

Between those folks who pursue the wily morel with single-minded dedication and those who hope to gather a mess in combination with turkey hunting, tens of thousands of Missourians spend hours in the state’s forests and creek bottoms from late March through most of May.

Thousands of those same people are in the woods hunting squirrels during the summer and fall months, but virtually none of them give a passing thought about adding gathering mushrooms to their morning’s activities.

That’s ironic, because a far greater variety of delicious wild mushrooms are free for the picking after Memorial Day than before.

Fear of misidentification is the most common reason people give for avoiding any mushroom not found in the produce department of the local grocery store- — except for the ubiquitous morel.

Some mushrooms are deadly.  Others won’t kill you, but they’ll make you so sick that, for a day or two, you may wish they had. Others are technically harmless, but they don’t taste like anything you’d want to put into your mouth more than once.

Why not just leave all summer mushrooms alone, despite that a few of them are culinary pearls beyond price?

Like many other activities, gathering mushrooms can be as safe or as risky as the gatherer chooses to make it.

I stay out of trouble by using two mushroom-identification guidebooks: “Mushrooms of North America” by Orson K. Miller, Jr. and “Smithson Handbooks Mushrooms” by Thomas Laessoe and Gary Lincoff.

Miller’s book includes an excellent introduction, good written descriptions of individual species and excellent photography.

The book’s major weakness is that its index relies almost exclusively on scientific names.

The Laessoe book spends less time on genus and family characteristics, but its descriptions — both written and photographic — are excellent.

Its index uses both scientific and common names.  I carry both books into the field with me and confine my search to identifiable genera and families.

I never gather a mushroom unless I can positively identify it by species in both books.

Miller refers to boletaceae as a genera and Laessoe calls it a family, but either way boletes are high on my list of potential fodder.

I say potential because the edibility of individual bolete species ranges from superb to poisonous. The good ones are well worth the effort required to identify them but, if in doubt, pass.  Boletes are commonly found in hardwood forests.

Both of my reference books rank several members of the cantharellaceae (chanterelle) family among the most delicious of all wild mushrooms.

These trumpet-shaped fungi are easy to identify with the help of a guidebook, but beware of imitations belonging to other families.

Chanterelles are found in oak-dominated hardwood forests and usually occur in groups.

One species from the agaricaceae family, the cultivated agaricus, is well known to anyone who buys fresh or canned mushrooms.

Members of the same species are common in sites with rich, disturbed soil.

Another member of this family, commonly known as the meadow mushroom, is almost always found in grassy open areas including yards, parks and pastures.

You don’t always have to look down to find edible mushrooms.

The chicken-of-the-woods (family polyporaceae) is a large luminous yellow to yellow-orange annual bracket fungus that grows on living trees.

It tastes like chicken and, like chicken, requires thorough cooking.

Warning: Some people are allergic to this mushroom.

If you prefer beef, you might like the beefsteak polypore.

It tastes like beef tongue seasoned with lemon juice and grows on mature living oaks.

Beyond these two easily identifiable species, messing around with tree-growing mushrooms is treading on the edge for most amateurs.

Although there are other edible species, most range from inedible to poisonous, so don’t let go of your reference books.

Like skydiving, white water rafting and voting for candidates from either major party, there are inherent risks associated with eating wild mushrooms.

Use a reliable reference book rather than this column as a guide and pass up any mushroom you’re not absolutely sure is safe.

At worst, you’ll have missed out on a treat. At best, you’ll have saved a trip to the hospital or worse.