This is my first entry for @daveks black and white photo contest.
You can check my seond entry here.
The theme of this contest is food and for this entry I've chosen to submit a picture of one of the favorite mushrooms in North America, morels (Morchella sp.).
First, the picture and then I'll get to the story behind it.
This picture was taken with an iPhone 4S camera.
I have conflicted feelings about morel hunting and the culture around these mushrooms.
One aspect I really enjoy about mushroom foraging is how people share their knowledge and the experience of being in nature. (I actually wrote a comic about it).
That's not the case for morels. When people go looking for morels they don't like to be followed to their secret spots where they know the precious mushrooms grow year after year. People still share their knowledge, but most of them ignore any mushroom that's not a morel and look at each other with envy counting how many morels others have found.
I found these four morels last Spring when I was out trying to learn how to identify local trees. I found a patch and I got four to eat them that night.
On my way back I met a group of people that peaked at my basket curiously and asked me where I have found them. At first I was hesitant to reveal the location of my recently discovered secret patch but I decided to tell them. Inmediately, they run towards the area and I was left behind wondering if I had done the right thing.
A common topic of discussion that comes out a lot during morel season is whether picking mushrooms hurts the mycelium (underground fungal body) or not.
Most people interested in picking morels would tell you that it doesn't since mushrooms are just the spore bearing structures and the fungi is still alive underground. However, any mushroom grower would tell you that the mycelium can't produce mushrooms indefinitely and eventually dies.
I've never been able to convince any morel enthusiast with this argument and that concerns me. Mushroom foragers praise themselves as nature lovers, but that's clearly not the case with morels. If we keep picking these mushrooms without leaving any behind to spread their spores their numbers will keep decreasing and we won't get to enjoy them anymore in the future.
So, if you like picking morels (or any other mushroom), remember to leave some behind next time you find a patch.
Some mushroom hunters have questionable morels, but people can change.
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