YORK, Pa. —
As the temperatures get warmer and plants come back to life in Pennsylvania, there are things growing beneath the surface that wait for just this time of year to show themselves.
Wild mushrooms like morels don’t take a trained eye to find them necessarily, but it certainly helps, says expert forager Drew Zimmerman.
“Every spring, when the morels get real big, I like to make crab stuff morels," he says. It's almost like you're chasing a high.
“I started foraging (because) I got really interested in wild mushrooms. I was kind of bored. I was like, I want something. I want a challenge, you know. So, I started hiking and just identifying wild mushrooms.”
Over the years, Zimmerman has learned the ins and outs of foraging, and now he wants to share his knowledge with others.
“Plants and everything are just starting to wake up," he says. "The ground temps are rising. South southwest facing hillsides, they're going to get the most sun. So, you're going to see a lot of things pop up on those.”
Walking with him in the woods, he quickly shows his knowledge by pointing out edible spring plants, and the types of trees he has luck finding morel mushrooms near. Elms, ashes, and apple are all trees these wild treats prefer, but he finds his luck near trees on their last root.
“I have really good luck around dead or dying trees," says Zimmerman. "There's already a mycelium matrix in the ground. It's pretty much attached to the root system of these trees. When the trees die, they release loads of these exudates through the roots, which is what the mycelium will capture and then use that as energy to produce fruiting bodies.”
Zimmerman's advice to find morels is to look for the early spring life, but also death. He also says getting low to the ground can really help to see them sticking up off the forest floor.
Most importantly, he stresses that if you find a mushroom and have no idea what it is, be sure to have it properly identified before any thought of consumption.
“There's old mushroom hunters and there's bold mushroom hunters. But there are no old, bold mushroom hunters," says Zimmerman. "If you really get into it, yeah you'll hear that saying often.”
With the handle @Unkle_Fungus on Instagram, there you can see all the mushrooms Zimmerman grows and finds.
He also has his own business, Unkle Fungus Mushrooms, from which he provides seasonal mushrooms for restaurants and also does consultations for anyone interested in becoming a forager.