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Looking for morel mushrooms? Better hurry
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Cindy Hadish/SourceMedia Group :: UPDATED: 11 May 2011 | 7:39 am :: in
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The afternoon sun highlights a morel growing April 28, 2010 in a Buchanan County timber. (Orlan Love/The Gazette)
Eastern Iowans with an appetite for morel mushrooms might go hungry this year.
“The spring was just too cold,” said Cedar Rapids restaurateur and morel hunter Marshall Godwin. “It just took out the season.”
While Godwin might find hundreds of morels in a given year, so far, he had only found a half-dozen, he said Tuesday.
The morel season is typically ending about this time, Godwin noted.
“There might still be a chance, but I doubt it,” he said. “That’s up to Mother Nature.”
Dean Abel, secretary of the Prairie States Mushroom Club, agreed with Godwin’s assessment.
“It’s not as good as past years,” said Abel, who works in the University of Iowa biology department in Iowa City.
Warm weather early last spring led to a bumper crop of sorts for morels, a spongy, native delicacy found in timber, often near dead elm trees and typically for only a few weeks in the spring.
Abel said this spring was too cold for soil to reach the temperature needed for the fungi to grow. The rapid jump into the 80s and 90s on Tuesday didn’t bode well, as the season often ends after three 80-degree days, he said.
Fans can still get their fix at this weekend’s Houby Days celebration in Czech Village in Cedar Rapids, which features an egg and morel breakfast from 7-11 a.m. Saturday and Sunday at Kuncl Mall, 59 16th Ave. SW.
They can also be purchased at farmers markets, if any vendors have them to sell.
The mushrooms are often eaten on their own, sauteed in butter with a cracker or flour coating.
“I haven’t eaten a morel this year because I haven’t found enough to eat,” Abel said.
