The Ethics of Harvesting

Everybody talks about picking responsibly, but who does it?

(Comments collected and collated by Larry Evans)

Larry: As morel picking approaches, it is time to count our blessings and remember fondly those patches that have been replaced by clearcuts, pavement and shopping malls. And while many people talk about picking responsibly, I wish they wouldn't pick at all near MY patches. But seriously folks, is it possible to harvest mushrooms so that the fungus is not impaired? Is there a reason to harvest responsibly? And how can we do that?

First, why should we pick responsibly? Spore production and the survival of the desirable species are oft-cited reasons. A study by Nancy Weber Smith has shown morels take 10 days to produce spores from the time they pop up; picking them when they are still infants insures that no spores will get away to reproduce. In the long run, picking baby morels drains the gene pool and may reduce future harvests. Morel biology, then, favors leaving babies in the field.

In many locations commercial pickers have adopted the "Rule of Thumb" - if it is smaller than your thumb, leave it. Of course, if you are a commercial picker, up at first light and racing up the hill as fast as possible with a horde of other pickers a few yards behind, this rule may be difficult to follow. But despite this, there is a strong sentiment among both commercial pickers and buyers against harvesting baby morels. It isn't worth getting a few ounces today when those same morels could grow up to be several times the volume in a couple days.

In the final analysis it is the morel buyers who are the judges. If competition for the product is intense, some of them let the small ones in. No one has more control than the buyer when it comes to selecting for size, and discouraging or discounting for immature or small specimens. When selling morels at the farmers market, I find that size is important to the consumers, too. Plenty of people will pay a premium price for the big "stuffer" morels. So from a strictly commercial standpoint, it makes sense to let the morels stand for a day or three in the field.

Connie Green, owner and head huntress of Wine Forest Wild Mushrooms: Harvest size is species-related. Morels, Black Trumpets, and Chanterelles are the main species I think of in this regard. In all of these, there is firm pressure in the commercial world to NOT harvest the babies.

The two mushrooms most subject to foolishly young harvest are Black Trumpets and Morels. Because of the competition on burn areas in particular, the communal agreement of "thumb-size" serves everyone's interests. The pounds can literally double and triple from a good area if everyone respects this.

Black Trumpets, like the whole Chanterelle family, are slow growers. The cup of Black Trumpets and Yellow Feet as well should be at least the size of a quarter. The harvest of young, immature "tubes" has been essentially stopped in the commercial world.

Larry Evans: But the fact remains that there is no economic restraint on "recreational" morel hunters, and as a result there is no NAMA-wide taboo against hunting and eating babies (but maybe that's because nobody has expressed it in just these terms.) What do you think?

Connie: Perhaps I've been a bit gentle on mushroom society pickers. Commercial pickers have to funnel their mushrooms through buyers. There is tremendous peer and financial incentive to leave the babies. The mushroom societies have no such peer pressure. One of my goals is to create such pressure. I think society members coming back to a collection table after a foray should be spanked for having babies in their baskets!

Larry: It would make a great photo.. But society pickers ARE aware. Paul Kroeger and I have made it a habit for many years to take the fungi from foray specimen tables "back to the woods" so they will reproduce. Unfortunately, often it is the rarest fungi that end up sealed away in a collection somewhere...

Is there a "right" way to pick a morel? Marge Evans, Author of “Morelling”:

I like to use a knife. Not only do I keep from disturbing the precious soil from which it grew, but also it avoids getting any grit into the sack. Yes, I'm lazy -- it makes the final cleaning easier. And the moment taken while I stoop to make the careful cut is a special one, a chance to admire this rare fruiting body, a chance to appreciate it. And the sack is of soft cloth or open mesh -- what we might call a bread sack. It seems to protect the delicate sponges while trekking back up the hill.

Larry: I confess, I'm lazy too. I often just pinch off morels even when I have a knife in my pocket.

Connie Green, Mushroom Goddess: Larry! You pinch the stalk? The problem with this is that even when it does break nicely, the ruptured flesh area discolors badly. This is of

little importance for immediate personal use, but is unacceptable for the market. Personally, I think the "root" of this problem for many people is having an easy to use knife. When you have to keep opening and closing a pocketknife, people tend to use their hands. I use a sheathed knife I carry on my belt -- it's esy to slip out, use, and slip back into the sheath.

Q: What other collecting practices are important?

Connie: The type of container you carry the mushrooms in is important. Plastic bag picked mushrooms are easily identified by buyers and often refused. By the time the poor bag of mushrooms has been strutted through the woods, the contents are sweaty, broken and just generally in poor shape. Matsutakes and Boletes, with their firm structure, are an exception to this. Some pickers I know drill holes in their plastic buckets in all sorts of wonderful creative patterns, and this lets the spores sift out as they go along. I often use a basket, and I like to picture myself as the Morton Salt Girl of the mushroom world as I go walking through the woods, shaking out spores with every step I take. I think that leaving a protective duff layer is important for every mushroom I can think of. Covering the hole left by picking the mushroom not only protects the mycelium, it's also really required for aesthetic and stealthy reasons. We could even extend this to the careful picking of Oysters, Sulfur Shelf and other wood lovers. I've found the hard way that you can damage future fruitings by tearing mushrooms off the wood.

Larry: And this extends to truffling as well. I always try to be as gentle as possible when trying to unearth these little gems, raking radially out from the tree rather than tangentally, and replacing the duff layer as carefully as possible. I have to boast by saying that on a couple of occasions I replaced the duff so carefully that I returned to the same spot and started poking around again before I realized that I'd just looked there!

Connie: Sloppy picking really bugs me. People forget sometimes that they're going to EAT the mushrooms. I notice that on society forays that even the edible collections are picked so filthy that they are uncleanable later and hence are thrown away because it's too much trouble. If we're going to pick and remove these edible life forms from the habitat, let's make sure they're going to be useful. Careful harvesting and a little brushing at the point of picking will ultimately leave you with clean gills, pores, caps and far less work later. The debris is easily tucked under leaf litter invisibly. This act alone aids in spore dispersal on the site of the mushroom.

Larry: While I understand why people collect the entire fruiting body, including underground parts, for identification purposes, it's bad form to do so if the specimens aren't subsequently wrapped or bagged separately. And there really is no reason to put dirt in a bag or basket with mushrooms you are collecting for the table. Also, let's look at the reproductive strategies of mycorrhizal fungi for a moment. Unlike saprobes (fungi making their living on dead organic material) such as “Pleurotus ostreatus,” these fungi form relationships with living trees which seem to last for decades and even centuries.

Assuming that they get a chance to fruit once a year, that gives them 100 opportunities to reproduce, and therefore any single year is insignificant in terms of overall spore production. Compare that with saprobes, which depend 100 percent on one or two reproductive events to continue the species. This goes a long way toward explaining why Oyster Mushrooms and Agaricus species produce spores so heavily, while Chanterelles, some polypores, and morels produce relatively fewer spores.

I see a trend that I think speaks well for the morel and that is that now more and more people tend to go to a particular burn site and set up camp and wait for the mushrooms, rather than chasing around with a crew, which is a much more expensive, and gasoline-dependent, lifestyle. These people often have an agreement with a buyer or a dryer. When someone is on-site like that, they tend to harvest more efficiently and leave the small stuff behind for later. This also tends to reduce friction; when day-pickers come in, there are still places for them to look in less productive, and sometimes more accessible, areas like roadsides.I would urge people who are considering commercial mushroom picking to have appropriate gear, clothing, and especially time, for such an adventure, and I encourage people to stay near the mushroom site for a while. The effort/return ratio is better for four days than for one or two days.

WHAT RECREATIONAL AND COMMERCIAL PICKERS SAY:

Todd: If there are say four in a cluster, Ill pick the biggest one or two. If the mushrooms are old rags, or something I don't want to eat, I leave them where they sit. Some years it is easier to be ethical, there are plenty of big mushrooms out there. Other times, like last year, the average morel is pretty small, even when it has the dark stripes on the ridges that show it has aged a while and is not getting any bigger.

Don: Matsies don't begin to drop spores until after they are too old to sell in Japan. (The button stage, with veil unbroken, is the Japanese ideal.) When you find one where the veil is already gone, you should leave it as a "flag." Many pickers leave these flags to alert other pickers (or themselves, later) that the area has been picked over. These left-behinds continue to drop spores for quite a while, even after the snow in some cases.

Bob: I try to eat the common species, but you can only eat so many Suillus. Respect the habitat, respect the mycelium, get up early in the morning and walk a lot.

Larry: On a foray in McCall many years ago, I was wandering the woods and another forayer, a woman with three children, casually walked up and said, "What are those you are picking?" I looked up and replied, "Chanterelles," and that was the last word spoken between us. "Hey kids!" she yelled, "Over here!" and before I could pick another handful, they had picked every mushroom in sight. That's why mushroom patches are secret!

Dave: I sometimes find that ethical picking and laziness conspire to leave a morel in the field. If I spot a smallish mushroom up the hill, it is much safer than a great big morel growing right by my foot. An anonymous picker from Reno told us he thought there should be a size limit on morels, like with sport fish. We talked about requiring pickers

to have a mark on their knife at the 2-inch mark, and penalizing buyers that took in lots of babies. Another picker suggested the Forest Service close off a burn until the morels were ready, so that they could throw spores before they got picked. One thing a surprising number of people ask is, "Are we selecting for smaller morels by just picking the big ones?"

Well, I think that may be true, but then maybe 500 million years ago the morels were all big as pineapples, and the dinosaurs munched all the really big ones and just left us the puny ones we have today!