CINCINNATI — It's that glorious time of year once more, when fungi fans strap on their hiking boots, grab their favorite mesh bags and take to the forests of the Greater Cincinnati region with one united goal: collecting delicious morels.
Peak morel hunting season varies, depending on springtime rainfalls and changing temperatures but it's usually good to keep an eye out between mid-April through May. This year, Cincinnati has experienced record rainfalls and a quick warm-up following a cold spell, which points to the moisture-loving morels sprouting plentifully in the 2023 season.
Those in the know have likely already staked out their favorite hunting spots, but there are many different options for morel hunting throughout the Tri-State.
Morels, when eaten, have an earthy, nutty flavor. They can grow just about anywhere, but are often more plentiful in southern Ohio, where temperatures and earth tend to warm earlier in the spring.
Prospective hunters should head to wooded areas with underbrush — like Burnet Woods, Sharon Woods or any other local park.
The tiny brain-like tops of morel mushrooms often pop up near downed trees, in damp spaces and around streams and banks prone to flooding, but there's truly no limit to where the versatile mushrooms can appear.
Most avid hunters carry a mesh bag for their quarry, so that as the mushrooms are collected, spores can still escape to help propagate future morel growth. It's also important to never fully clear a morel cache of mushrooms, to help ensure that spot continues producing throughout the season and into future ones.
But there's also a danger to mushroom hunting — in particular, because the morel has an evil twin that can cause illness when eaten. Both morels and their doppelgangers have spongey-looking, brain-like tops. The key difference is the morel's stem; on a true morel, the mushroom's hollow cap runs all the way down through the stem, but a false morel's stem is not hollow.
Mushroom hunters, particularly beginners, should cut their quarry in half after collecting to make sure only true morels are consumed.
Cincinnati isn't the only region in Ohio that boasts plentiful mushrooms; the Ohio Mushroom Society has been scouring forest floors throughout the Buckeye State since 1973.
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