It’s not as if black morels taste differently than yellow morels…they don’t. And it’s not as if the black species (Morchella elata) looks much differently than the yellow one as the former is light black and the latter is dark yellow. Both feature honeycombed caps, hollow stems, and are two to four inches in length. And in the Blue Ridge Mountains, each species can appear as early as late March and as late as early May.
Bruce Ingram
A black morel found growing in Craig County, Virginia
But what caused me to become so excited last April during a mushroom hunt in Craig County, Virginia was that I found my first black morels in three years. For whatever reason, black morels seem to be less common than the yellow species in the Virginia and West Virginia highlands, at least from my experience.
These particular black morels were growing in a five-year-old clear-cut, where I had just sat down to rest…pondering why I had not been able to find any edible mushrooms that day. After resting for a while, I scanned the woodland floor, and there growing all around me were morels – a serendipitous occurrence of the greatest magnitude for fungi fans.
My wife Elaine delights in cooking with morels (like most edible mushrooms, morels should not be consumed raw). They go great as toppings on meat entrees, and they are sublime in any kind of egg dish. This spring, I’ll once again go forth on numerous morel expeditions, and perhaps will encounter tulip morels – a third morel species that dwells in our highlands.
Bruce and Elaine Ingram will profile a different wild edible every month. For more information on their book Living the Locavore Lifestyle, contact them at bruceingramoutdoors@gmail.com.