Important reasons why morels are considered a rarity and difficult to find are their limited lifespan, unusual growth patterns, and methods of propagation.
The morel harvesting season generally begins in mid to late spring and lasts less than three weeks. Within a very modest range of latitude or even elevation, that fruiting season for morels can vary by up to two weeks, while producing profusely in one area and, just a few miles away, barely producing.
Morels are extremely sensitive to environmental conditions. Requiring specific soil moisture and relative humidity, needing exact levels of sunlight simultaneously with exact air and soil temperatures, and relying on the previous year’s conditions to help the fungus establish its root-shaped web means morels they will only produce if all conditions are met at precisely the right time point in their lifetime.
Morels sprout and mature in a very short time; in most cases, mother’s days. It’s this unusual growth spurt that contributes to the myth that morels ripen overnight (even instantly). A friend’s sister, when they were young, used to torment him during harvest time by making him close his eyes, turn around, and then open his eyes to see a ripe morel where he was sure none had been moments before. He was well into his teens when she admitted she had cheated on seeing the morel before turning it over.
Unfortunately, morels also pass maturity and collapse into pulpy masses on mother days, making harvesting a race against time.
Equally puzzling and frustrating is the morel’s method of propagation. Although morels depend on the spores contained within the fruit for replanting, the actual method of producing fruit each spring is the web of web-like filaments that develop less than a couple of inches below the ground. Imagine a carpet of veins and capillaries running through the leafy compost on a forest floor, and you have a rough picture of the dozens of yards of fibers that spread through the morels in a given growing area.
This network does not begin to grow in the fruiting season. Rather, it begins the summer before, after the morels release their spores into the air. These spores progress through three key phases of development and growth, until the fiber network of the connected roots has infiltrated into the soil substrate. In early spring, these new nets will produce lumpy nodules just below the surface that, when conditions are optimal, will grow into morel fruits.
But the process doesn’t stop there. That delicate web will remain intact underground, surviving some of the harshest winters in North America. While parts of the fibrous web may break or be disturbed, the rest will survive, providing a nutritional link for the next season’s morel harvest.
This habit means that even when there is no fruit production in one season, or when extensive harvesting appears to strip all spore-producing morels from an area, the next season, if conditions are optimal, a bumper crop can occur, but disappear in a few days. if collectors miss the key collection window of opportunity.