It’s morel time! The succulent spring-fruiting fungi that are the most sought after mushroom in North America are popping up everywhere in woodlands across Western North Carolina just waiting for the picking.

The only problem is spotting them. I can do pretty well in the fall seeing the various milky mushrooms (those in the “Lactarius” genus) or the various orange-colored chanterelles or the shining white oyster fungi, and so on. But morels are difficult, for me. Their pitted tan fruiting bodies seem to blend right in with the leaf-litter.

There are those — my wife is one of them — who can locate a morels in a heartbeat. When we’re out hunting them together, she’ll say, “There’s one,” pointing to a big morel beside my right foot. A few moments later, she’ll exclaim “And there’s another one!” pointing to an even larger specimen beside my left foot.

This is exasperating, so I fake it by acting like I’m not really trying to find morels but just tagging along for the fresh air. Every now and then, however, my brain and eyes get in sync with one another and I go on a hot streak, finding one morel after another. But that’s not very often. A good outing for me is one that turns up, say, four morels. So far this spring, sad to say, I haven’t found a one. Meanwhile, my wife found more than 20 in about an hour one day last week.

Like bass fishermen, morel hunters have their favorite spots and idiosyncrasies. My dentist here in Bryson City likes to search under white pines. Others prefer to spend their time poking around under dead elm trees.

In an article by Soc Clay titled “The Finest Fungus Among Us — and How To Find It” that appeared in “American Forests” magazine, readers were advised to search under “large poplar trees growing on flat areas just under the ridgetops of east-facing slopes.”

Like a fisherman who has great faith in a certain plug and will fish it from dawn to dusk with great success, good morel hunters tend to frequent habitats in which they first experienced the sweet taste of success. Morels seem to be almost social; that is, where you find one, you tend to find more – sometimes a whole lot more, which is exciting.

Some authorities look for morels in areas affected by a burn the previous year, noting by way of historical precedence that, “Morels have long been so sought after and have such an affinity for burned areas that the practice of slashing and burning to produce a morel crop the next year was banned by royal decree in medieval Germany.”

Most everyone agrees that when all else fails, go look under old apple trees; or better yet, apple trees that have recently fallen and are just starting to rot. If you can’t find morels in that situation, you’d probably best find something else to do.

Morels fruit from late March into early May or even a little later, if it’s not too warm. There are different sizes and shades, ranging from gray or blackish ones the size of golf balls to creamy-yellowish ones the size of baseballs. Never eat any sort of fungi — even something as distinctive as a morel — without consulting a field guide.

When I do round up a batch of morels, I know what to do with them. Their flavor is too delicate to cook them as I do the strong-tasting fall species, which is in a pasta, onion, and cheese casserole, with sliced almonds.

Slice your morels lengthwise and sautee them lightly with onions, then combine to make a light white sauce to serve over, say, rice. Or maybe serve the morel sauce over strips of chicken breast stir-fried off to the side of the morels. However you prepare morels, keep the preparation light, and they’ll make for some good eating.

George Ellison wrote the biographical introductions for the reissues of two Appalachian classics: Horace Kephart’s Our Southern Highlanders and James Mooney’s History, Myths, and Sacred Formulas of the Cherokees. In June 2005, a selection of his Back Then columns was published by The History Press in Charleston as Mountain Passages: Natural and Cultural History of Western North Carolina and the Great Smoky Mountains. Readers can contact him at P.O. Box 1262, Bryson City, N.C., 28713, or at info@georgeellison.com.