Our first foray into the world of wild mushrooms began, like it has for many others, with a springtime hunt for morel mushrooms. Years of hunting and tons of mushrooms later, for us, morels still reign supreme. Their spongy texture and earthy flavor combined with a hollow, stuffable mushroom body makes morels quite versatile and lends them to a great many possibilities for skilled chefs. The morels pictured here were found in the Pacific Northwest and are examples of the most common commercially available North American morel mushrooms.

Morels are believed to be both ectomycorrhizal and saprotrophic fungi. Ectomycorrhizal fungi form a symbiotic relationship with the roots of various plant species to exchange nutrients or elements such as carbon. Saprotrophic fungi obtain their nutrition from non-living organic materials. These characteristics of the morel mushroom are observable in their habitat as they are commonly found near specific tree types which are often dead, injured, or dying.