Wildfire Burn Scars Spur Latest California Gold Rush For Morel Mushroom Foragers
Maria Finn, SF Gate
PLACERVILLE, Calif. May 19, 2022 — Botanist Alison Stanton and her 12-year-old son Milo forged a small river, climbed across a huge, fallen tree and scrambled up a dirt embankment in Eldorado National Forest, where last year the Caldor Fire scorched 221,835 acres.
As they reached a patch of burned forestland, Milo skipped ahead like a mountain goat then shouted, “I found some!”
He was speaking of morels, delicious mushrooms with caps of velvety dark ribs and marbling beige-pitted surfaces. Prized for their rich, savory flavor, morels grow in mixed conifer forests. But after a forest fire, huge flushes of them are known to sprout.
This spring, explosions of morels in this forest and other burned areas of California are creating a new kind of gold rush, luring commercial and recreational mushroom hunters from around the state. They are hiking up mountainsides, searching the forest understory and peering into burned-out root pits to find these toothsome fungi.
Fungi on the move
There are various theories on why morels sprout after a fire, though the exact cause remains a mystery. Some scientists speculate it could have something to do with changes in the soil or the lack of competition from other organisms after a fire, while others believe the shifting availability of food and nutrients is responsible.
According to Thomas Hofstra, professor of forestry and natural resources at Columbia College in Sonora, changes in the environment prompt the mushrooms to move.
Morels have a symbiotic relationship with certain trees, he said, and when a fire removes those trees, the fungi too must pick up and move.
“The way they do this is by producing spores which blow around on the wind,” he said.
Teams of professional pickers, passionate amateurs and even some mushroom hunting virgins have headed into the hills to search for morels. Some have come back with a bounty — others have hiked miles, slid down charred hillsides and sloshed through snow melt only to come out disappointed.
But such is the nature of mushroom hunting. Kevin Sadlier, founder of the Mycological Society of Marin, led members out to the Caldor Fire burn area in early May and through experience has developed a few basic strategies when foraging.
“Whether you find them can really depend on the weather, like if there’s been rain and snow melt to trigger them,” he said. “You basically follow the snow melt up the side of the mountain. Look for trees that still have canopy and understory.”
While seasoned mushroom hunters often develop their go-to spots for edibles like porcini and chanterelles year after year, morels tend to appear one year after a fire. Sadlier said that morels could even keep popping up two to three years after a burn.
Even so, on this particular trip, he only found about 4 pounds in three days, which is not much for a veteran mushroom man like Sadlier. He blames the scarcity on all the commercial pickers who are up there harvesting.
‘It happened fast’
For those who live in the area, like Stanton and her husband, Mark Bird, morels grow in their backyards. The couple have long picked many wild mushrooms in the area with their son Milo. For them, it’s a treasured family activity.
This spring, the trio have already picked pounds of morels. It’s a small reward for the stress and chaos of living through the Caldor Fire. With that experience, Stanton offered some advice for anyone evacuating from a wildfire.
“Grab your dirty laundry basket,” she said. “That will have clothes you wear a lot in it. You can always wash them later.”
She lives in the small town of Kyburz. With a mere population of 167, it’s tucked into the Eldorado National Forest about 30 miles from South Lake Tahoe, and where Stanton works as a botanist. In 2010, an electrical fire erupted inside her home and burned most of it down.
“I grabbed my baby, Milo, and my computer,” she said. “It happened fast.”
In 2021, the Caldor Fire, which raged along the Highway 50 corridor, came within yards of their newly rebuilt home. The day they had to evacuate, she was taking her then-11-year-old son to school in Pollock Pines. She recalled skies of billowing gray smoke and orange flames setting the backdrop. Right after she dropped her son off, the sheriff texted and said they were evacuating the school. Everyone, including teachers, kids and families, were forced to leave the area.
“This time we had a day to pack up,” she said. “My husband Mark, Milo and I got our cats and rabbits in the car and drove to my dad’s place in Nevada.”
From there, she monitored the fire’s progress through The Lookout, an online resource for those monitoring wildfires. She had a lot of context, as her father had been a wildland fighter and a smokejumper in the late ’60s, and there was a dispatch radio in her house growing up.
“The fire crews were heroic,” she said. “They worked so hard to save our homes. They created clearings, fuel breaks and lit backfires to save our homes.”
As we walked through the forest behind her house, many of the trees were scorched, including a towering Douglas fir, a remnant of the old growth forest that used to be there. Other trees were left untouched. It was almost as if the fire moved like a river delta through the thicket.
“This Douglas fir won’t survive,” Stanton said. “It’s probably 500 years old and lost most of its top a long time ago, and the fire consumed the remaining branches.”
As Milo jumped in and out of holes that were burned out in the fire, Stanton added that most of what is now the Eldorado National Forest was clear cut during the Gold Rush-era. In turn, the trees grew back at an even age, which is unnatural.
“The forests post-Gold Rush are much denser and more filled with fuel because of a long history of fire suppression,” she said. “Of course, my dad’s generation didn’t know that suppressing smaller fires would lead to larger fires in the future.”
She pointed to a soap plant nearby, followed by a false Solomon’s seal with its arching stems poking through the ground.
“Fire is destructive, but also rejuvenating,” she said. “I’m seeing plants I’ve never seen on this path before.”
Fire as a healthy part of forest management is something the Indigenous people of California have long been familiar with.
Foraged after fire
“I found some!” Milo called from a cluster of mushrooms. […]
