I am all for creative sushi, but not when the creator doesn't fully understand the ingredients. A sushi restaurant in Montana served people sushi with raw and very undercooked morel (Morchella spp.) mushrooms on it. Over fifty people ended up sick with gastrointestinal upset, and two people actually died. Other restaurants that served the same batch of morels, fully cooked, had no such issues, and there was no evidence that there was any mishandling of the morels that could have caused a bacterial or other contamination. So it's pretty clear that the raw morels themselves were to blame.

Yes, there are a few wild mushroom species you can eat raw, and only in small amounts). No, Morchella are not among them. Morels have a toxin in them that's neutralized by cooking; Paul Stamets theorized that it's hydrazine, but no one has been able to isolate hydrazine in a morel yet so that's not a done deal. Whatever it is, there's enough of it that it tends to give people nasty gastrointestinal upset when they eat raw morels, even in small quantities. This is the first I've heard of people dying from it.

It's not the only time I've heard of people dying from consuming a commonly-considered-edible mushroom, though. There were two separate incidents--2004 and 2009--in which several people who ate angel wing mushrooms (Pleurocybella porrigens) died of encephalopathy. Now, it did turn out that most of the people sickened had pre-existing liver and/or kidney issues. And a 2011 study identified an unstable amino acid, now named Pleurocybellaziridine, as the possible fatal factor that was found in large quantities in angel wings. It could be that the culprits were flushes of these mushrooms with abnormally high amounts of Pleurocybellaziridine. But you can't tell how much of a given metabolite a given mushroom has just by looking at it, and so that raises enough of an alarm for me personally that as a forager I just put angel wings on the "do not eat" list.

Will I continue to eat morels? Yes. The toxicity associated with raw morels has been known for a long time, and there have been no recorded issues with thoroughly cooked morels (the angel wings were also cooked, meaning the toxin is not thermolabile.) And as mentioned before, almost any edible wild mushroom is going to give you gastrointestinal issues if you eat it raw. The mushrooms you get at the store are a weird outlier that can be safely eaten raw. And by the way, button mushrooms, criminis, and portobellos are all the same species--Agaricus bisporus--at different stages of development.

This is why I emphasize in my foraging classes that you should always cook your wild mushrooms thoroughly, and if you're trying a new species for the first time only eat a small amount and then wait a few days to make sure you don't have any reactions. As the saying goes, there are old mushroom hunters and there are bold mushroom hunters, but there are no old, bold mushroom hunters.

Morchella conica

Morels have been a Holy Grail of mushrooms for me. They're pretty common, yet I could never spot one. I'm always in the wrong place or time for them. But my luck changed for the better this Spring (April 12, 2024)

Ceratiomyxa morchella by Alison Pollack

Morel Mushroom Morchella sp.

Western Washington, April 26 2023 Photo Mary Howerton

Spitzmorchel, Morchella elata 23.03.24

04/05/2023 The Blue Haired Girlfriend spotted a couple morels while we were walking down to the mailbox. Delicious! We've never seen morels here before.

Every year, in spring and autumn, when the light comes through the rain in a particular way, we go through a process foragers sometimes call "getting your mushroom eyes." At first you look at pieces of the forest one after another: the shadow of a likely tree, a mossy hollow, a fallen log, a pile of rotting leaves. Mushrooms could be in this place, or that one, and you focus on each possibility one at a time, switch between them with a sort of internal click. But as the rains continue and the world greens, we start to read the forest as a whole story, instead of sounding out each individual shadow and clump of moss. There's a trick to it that has to be relearned each season, a porousness, a way of looking at the world and letting it flow through you and feeling the underlying currents and patterns.

Until one day you are walking in the woods and there are mushrooms everywhere and it doesn’t seem possible you didn’t see them before. Like you've gone through a hidden doorway into a different world, stranger and truer than the old one.

The thing that is most like getting your mushroom eyes is falling in love. You meet someone. A musician: you talk about synthesizers and phrygian mode. You look at the moon together when you are sleepless thousands of kilometers apart. You've never been good at conversation, but she listens to everyone - waiters and tow truck drivers and delivery people - and you learn that everyone has a story so beautiful that listening to them tell it feels like wings opening inside your ribcage. At first the glimpses of the other world are piecemeal, clicking into and out of focus - like maybe you hear a synthesizer in grocery store background music, and you tell your friends, "hey, you know, my girlfriend is a musician," and they smile tolerantly. (It is not the first time they have heard this.)

  Until one day you realize you can feel the phase of the moon without looking at it, the mode of a song is as clear as its lyrics, and that when you talk to a stranger you can see a soft light in them now, like a lantern through stained glass. It doesn’t seem possible that you didn’t see these things before, somehow. You have come through the door of her, to a better world, vaster and stranger and truer. We enjoy cooking, but I think more than the occasional leaf or mushroom for the kitchen, the thing we love about foraging is to love the world, together.

Spring mushrooms in my head 🤗

can you do a morel for fotd?

FOTD #090 : true morel! (morchella esculenta)

the true morel (AKA common morel, morel, yellow morel, morel mushroom, & sponge morel) is a species of fungus in the family morchellaceae. they are found on the ground in a variety of habitats, & have been spotted in north america, brazil & bulgaria so far, but is likely more widespread.

the big question : can i bite it?? yes !! morels are edible & highly sought after. just be sure you are not allergic before ingesting them.

m. esculenta description :

"the cap is pale brownish cream, yellow to tan or pale brown to greyish brown. the edges of the ridges are usually lighter than the pits, & somewhat oval in outline, sometimes bluntly cone-shaped with a rounded top or more elongate. caps are hollow, attached to the stem at the lower edge, & typically about 2–7 centimetres (1–3 inches) broad by 2–10 cm (1–4 in) tall. the flesh is brittle. the stem is white to pallid or pale yellow, hollow, & straight or with a club-shaped or bulbous base. it is finely granular overall, somewhat ridged, generally about 2–9 cm (1–3+1⁄2 in) long by 2–5 cm (1–2 in) thick. in age it may have brownish stains near the base."

[images : source & source] [fungus description : source]

One of my favorite parts of spring is finally here!

I got bored finding verpas 🤷‍♀️

Morchella conica

Ceratiomyxa morchella by Eric Cho

My Backyard Morels Morchella importuna Western Washington, April 26 2023 Photos Mary Howerton

Neues aus der Morchel Saison, Update from the morel season

Darling and her "friend" Morchella.

| "I feel a tingling up my spine. The moment opponents showcase each one's abilities!! It's addictive! I'm going to smoke your shit like a weed, motherfucker!!"

See Morel Mackernasey and all the other Hunters in Hunter x Hunter directed by Denis Villeneuve, in theaters Summer 2024!

He'll hunt you down. The Hunter of Hunters.