Heralds of Spring

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Some point to the plant’s tasty and nutritious spring leaves and wine-worthy blossoms as its most redeeming features; wise gardeners point out that the dandelion’s pollen is an important source of early-spring sustenance for ladybugs and other beneficial insects. Me? I welcome the much-maligned wildflowers for a slightly different reason. Dandelions often mingle with other lawn-loving wildflowers, including their less leafy look-alike, coltsfoot, and early spring’s purple and pale lavender violets. The result is a combination of color too lovely to mow right away — an excuse I’m happy to accept as the dandelion’s spring gift to me.

THE MOREL OF THE STORY

Of the roughly 10,000 different kinds of mushrooms in the United States and Canada, none are as fervently sought after as morels, woodland delicacies that in most regions show themselves in spring for only about three weeks. Even in those parts of the West and Northwest where they can be abundant and sizeable, morels are so prized that local police sometimes patrol prime picking territories to keep the peace. And in much of the East, where their presence can be scattered and unpredictable, morels are nothing less than the Holy Grail among mushroomers. The truth is, in many places you’re more likely to find other morel seekers scattered throughout the woods than you are the mushrooms themselves.

But the pursuit is worth it. Whether simply sautéed in butter, fried in batter or served more elaborately in a cream sauce, morels have a rich, woodsy flavor unlike any other. Close cousins to truffles, morels don’t have gills like most mushrooms, but instead produce their spores in tiny sacs, each called an ascus. The mushrooms are hollow and have a pale stem topped by a fleshy, conical head with distinct irregular ridges and deep pits. Picture a pinecone-shaped bath sponge on a stout stick, and you’ll get the rough idea. Their only look-alikes are false morels, many of which are inedible or toxic to some degree. False morels have smooth or merely wrinkled heads, and are not pitted.

Most experts say to start looking for morels when the oak leaves in your region are the size of a squirrel’s ears. The morning after a warm spring rain is an especially good time, and prime spots are the bases of old or dead trees, as well as disturbed soil and burnt-over sites. Small, black morels seem to favor proximity to evergreens, aspens and birches, while the larger yellow morels and white morels tend to grow in old orchards and meadows and near poplars, oaks, elms, beeches and maples.

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