Useful apps, info and books to help you find and identify edibles.
- Search for specific plants/fungi/organisms here on…
- https://www.inaturalist.org/
Backroads map book (app) forest service roads and topographic info: https://www.backroadmapbooks.com/
- with offline access to maps and info on crown land boundaries
Land rights information…
Recommended Foraging Resources:
- Plant/Fungi Books: Plants of the Pacific Northwest (Pojar/mackinnon)
- Boreal Herbal (beverly gray)
- All the rain promises and more (Arora) – for mushrooms
Morels
Fire
- Fire brings lots of new growth
- Fire adapted plans and trees
- Fire part of traditional land management practices
Whose land are we on?
- This is unceded/stolen land
- As people interested in having connection with the land and harvesting on it, how do we harvest respectfully?
- BC Association of First Nations
- Do research to find out what interactions they want with public
- Give back in ways that you can
- Eg revitalization and land back initiatives
- Cannot pick on parks or on reserve lands
Trees
Douglas fir
- Great first tree to know for finding mushrooms
- Not a true fir
- Needles like a bottle brush
Pine trees
- Straight, skinny trees
- Needles in pairs or threes for lodgepole or ponderosa
Cottonwoods
- Certain varieties grow in association with cottonwood
Significance of trees
- Look up before looking down
- Morels hyper-accumulate heavy metals , specifically arsenic
- In old Apple orchards used arsenic as pesticide
- Make informed decision and history
Burn morels
- Black morels and grey morels
Mycorrhiza
Symbiotic relationship between trees and fungi through roots
- Mycelium gives water and minerals and communication networks
- Tree gives up to 1/3 of sugars from photosynthesis
- Some morels are decomposers like eating dead wood
- Burn Morels
- Celebration of life and death and also a mourning
- During fire they lose their tree partners and have a giant fruiting party and send up reproductive structures
Safety
- Main issue is getting lost
- Send a location pin and also when you’re going to check in
- Bear spray clipped;33 on outside and accessible to get to easily
- Make your gear high visibility
- Have enough water and food
- Whistle code
- One blast – I’m here
- Two blasts – come here and look! (There’s no trouble, something is good, come to me)
- Three blasts – ouch, something bad happened (I’m in trouble, come help me)
- Navigation
- Have a sense of where north is
- Forest compaction
- Wider sphere so not trampling in same area
Morel ID
- Hollow from tip to stem
- All are a fancy cup fungus
- Cup shaped and produce spores in microscopic sacks
- Tiny cups around like a honeycomb
- All morels are poisonous raw (even when dried)
- How to know when to pick it
- Needs to be mature. Not about size
- Need expanded ridges
- If you slice vertically, usually two layers thick
- Where there are one, there are usually more
- Morels need moisture to fruit, so damp areas
- Look for valleys/water sources
Harvesting
- Acknowledge and thank mushroom
- Analyze that you’re harvesting in a good way (that you’re leaving some)
- Get as low as you can and cut
- Try not to get dirt in your basket
- Gear
- Flat basket (so it won’t roll away or have all mushrooms crush each other)
- Baskets allow mushrooms to breathe and also spore dispersal as you harvest
Cooking
- Keep it simple – a fat and salt
- Thyme is a good complement
- They freeze or dry really well
- Brush clean and trim stalk before putting them in basket
- Freeze on a baking sheet for a few hours until the flesh is frozen enough to put them in a container or bag
- Can dry them low heat in oven
- Morels taste best really well cooked
- Shoyu, toasted cumin and salt morels on toast
