Good Morel Habitat vs. Bad Morel Habitat

Years ago, I didn’t know anything about morel mushrooms. I didn’t know what they looked like. I didn’t know how they tasted. I didn’t even know they existed.

Then one day I attended a mushroom program with a local club. Experts in the club introduced me to morels. “Here’s what morels look like,” they said. “You’ll find them all over this park.”

“Great,” I thought to myself. “I now know everything I need to know.”

Except I still hardly knew anything.

Sure, I quickly learned how to identify morels, and I heard a few things about looking in certain areas: “Look for elms, apples, and poplars. Morels really like sweet soil.”

But where would I find elms, apples, and poplars? What the heck is sweet soil?

It soon dawned on me that knowledge of mushrooms wasn’t enough. If I really wanted to improve my skills, I needed to learn tree identification. I needed to learn ecology. I needed to learn geology.

And so I learned as much as I could. Slowly but consistently, I developed a wider set of skills. Eventually, I became a better mushroom hunter.

Today, I interact with wild landscapes a bit differently than I did back then. I now look for connections. I look for relationships. I look at the bigger picture.

All this to say, if you want to find morels this year, I strongly encourage you to learn the connections that bind morels to their ecosystems. In a brand new video, I discuss how to approach morel mushroom hunting through a more holistic lens.

You can watch the video here.

Speaking of learning, consider enrolling in Foraging Wild Mushrooms to improve your foraging skills.

I created this 4-season online course to help you become a successful mushroom hunter. Included in this course are instructional videos on mushroom ecology, mushroom biology, common edible mushrooms, medicinal mushrooms, poisonous mushrooms, cooking techniques, and medicine-making.

Foraging Wild Mushrooms is currently open for enrollment. You can sign up here.

Thanks for reading and watching, and thanks for your continued support!

— Adam Haritan

If This Isn’t Good Medicine, I Don’t Know What Is

To find good medicine, look in a forest. In a forest, you’ll encounter plants that have the ability to heal human ailments.

Many years ago, I learned about the medicinal properties of a particular woody plant. This woody plant, when applied to my face as an extract, improved my poor complexion.

Over the years, I’ve been able to maintain a decent complexion thanks to this plant (and thanks to significant lifestyle changes). While I no longer rely on this plant to heal my physical ailment, I do rely on it to address an existential problem.

Plaguing the human species, this problem can be solved if we know where to look.

To learn more about this plant and its ability to offer good medicine, check out the brand-new video.

I’d also like to mention that I’ll be part of the Wild Ones Western PA Chapter’s annual symposium on March 26, where I’ll be joining a panel discussion focused on strengthening communities and native habitats.

You can learn more about the event here.

Thanks for reading and watching, and thanks for your continued support!

— Adam Haritan

A Massive Maple Lives In These Woods

Rough, weathered, worn, and warped.

Humans try to avoid these four conditions. Old trees embrace them.

This is why I advocate taking long walks in the woods. In wooded ecosystems, we sometimes discover the ragged splendor of old trees.

On a recent walk in a hardwood forest, I rediscovered a tree I had first encountered many months ago. Rough, weathered, worn, and warped, it’s one of the most remarkable trees I have ever seen.

To learn more about this aged beauty, check out the brand-new video.

Thanks for reading and watching! Have you seen any remarkable trees lately?

— Adam Haritan

Preseason Morel Mushroom Hunting Tips

If you want to find morel mushrooms this year, here’s a tip: don’t wait until spring to begin your hunt.

This might sound like unconventional advice. After all, current temperatures are too cold for morels. Wood frogs haven’t even bred yet. Spring is still another 50 days away.

All these things are true. But this next statement is also true: you can drastically improve your future chances of finding morels by doing a few things right now.

In a brand-new video, I discuss several tactics we can implement immediately. I also share my predictions for the upcoming season. Will the mushrooms be plentiful this year? Will they be scarce?

You can watch the new video here.

Thanks for reading and watching!

— Adam Haritan

Juniper: A Common Evergreen

Juniper: A Common Evergreen

An Easy Way to Identify Certain trees in Winter

Want to improve your winter tree identification skills? Here’s a good tip: Look for marcescent leaves.

Marcescence describes leaves that have turned brown and are still attached to trees. These withered leaves often persist on the trees until spring.

As you might expect, marcescence isn’t a feature displayed by too many woody plants. When you see a marcescent tree or shrub, you can narrow down your ID choices to a relatively small number of species.

In the temperate woodlands of eastern North America, marcescence is often displayed by hornbeam (Carpinus), beech (Fagus), witch-hazel (Hamamelis), hophornbeam (Ostrya), and oak (Quercus).

No one is exactly sure why marcescence exists. Here are a few hypotheses:

It allows plants to photosynthesize longer into the autumn season.
It deters herbivores from browsing twigs and buds.
Marcescent trees provide shelter to animals that in turn provide nutrients to trees.
Marcescent leaves, when they finally fall off, provide pulses of nutrients to their host trees.
Marcescent leaves, when they finally fall off, smother new growth of competing woody plants in the spring.

All of these statements can be true to some degree, but it is uncertain whether any one of them is the true reason for marcescence.

Still, you and I can use marcescence to our advantage when attempting to identify woody plants. A good first step is to learn which woody plants are marcescent in our region. We can then seek out these plants, spend some time with them, and fall in love with the process.

To learn even more tips for identifying trees, consider enrolling in Trees In All Seasons. Today is the final day of the winter sale.

You can learn more and register here.

Also, if you’re interested in learning how to forage mushrooms this winter, consider enrolling in Foraging Wild Mushrooms. This 4-season online course is on sale until the end of today, December 23.

Thanks for supporting nature education!

— Adam Haritan

Two Useful Nature Skills to Learn this Winter

Greetings,

In anticipation of the winter season, I am excited to announce that two Learn Your Land online courses are on sale this week.

To improve your foraging skills, consider enrolling in Foraging Wild Mushrooms. This 4-season online course is designed to help you safely and successfully harvest wild mushrooms from the forest, from the field, and even from your backyard.

To improve your tree identification skills, consider enrolling in Trees In All Seasons. This online course teaches you how to identify 100 trees in every season. If you want to develop the confidence to look at a tree and say, “That’s black spruce, no doubt about it,” or “That’s most certainly sourwood,” or “That can’t be anything but mockernut hickory,” consider enrolling today.

These courses are self-paced and presented entirely online. Once enrolled, you can start, stop, and resume at any time.

Please note that both courses — Foraging Wild Mushrooms and Trees In All Seasons — are on sale for one week only, from today until Monday, December 23.

Thanks for supporting nature education!

—Adam Haritan

Making Mullein Torches (Hag Candles): A Magical Samhain Tradition

Making Mullein Torches (Hag Candles): A Magical Samhain Tradition

Exploring Wild Ecosystems Is Now Open For Enrollment

Greetings,

I am excited to announce that my newest online course, Exploring Wild Ecosystems, is now open for enrollment!

You can register here.

This course is designed to improve your ecological knowledge by introducing you to fascinating ecosystems — including alvars, barrens, bogs, dunes, fens, glades, savannas, vernal pools, and others!

Learning to recognize ecosystems is an essential step toward understanding how nature works. When we pay attention to the bigger picture, we see beyond individual components. We see connections, we see relationships, and we see where humans fit into the story.

If you want to develop ecological literacy; if you want to be able to read landscapes more effectively; if you want to see how all the components within nature are connected, consider enrolling in Exploring Wild Ecosystems today.

Please note that Exploring Wild Ecosystems is open for one week only — from today until Monday, September 30. After that, registration will be closed. Upon registration, you can immediately access all course content and view the lessons at your own pace.

To learn more about the course, check out this video which gives you an overview of what you can expect.

Thanks for supporting nature education! I hope to see you in there!

—Adam Haritan

An Embarrassing Foraging Story

Many years ago, I became obsessed with finding wild cranberries. At the time, I had only read about wild cranberries in foraging books. I had never seen a single cranberry in the wild.

On my quest to find wild cranberries, I somehow ended up in northern Pennsylvania. A friend told me that a bog existed several miles north of I-80. “You can’t miss it,” my friend said. When I arrived at the location and stepped out of my car, all I could see was a deciduous forest.

“A bog must be in there somewhere,” I thought. Rather than consult a map, I immediately hopped on a trail leading into the woods.

A closed-canopy forest surrounded me for many miles. Large trees prevented sunlight from reaching the understory. The forest exuded dark beauty, but it lacked wild cranberries.

I continued walking deeper into the forest, constantly scanning the ground for wild cranberries. No luck.

Hours passed before a realization dawned on me. Earlier in the day, I saw an extensive opening in the forest. It was way off in the distance near the beginning of the trail. Unfamiliar with bogs, I thought the opening might’ve been a field or a meadow, so I ignored it. Several hours later, I realized my amateur mistake. Could the opening have been a bog?

With daylight fading fast, I headed back toward the opening and eventually walked into a sphagnum-rich ecosystem bursting with wild cranberries. “So this is a bog,” I thought to myself. “How could I have overlooked this?”

In hindsight, it’s easy to see how I missed the bog. I had no idea that a bog was an open habitat. I had no idea that finding a bog in a forest could be as simple as looking for light.

Today, I see things a bit differently. I certainly don’t consider myself to be an expert forager, but I understand the importance of developing ecological literacy — something that specialists often disregard.

To improve any outdoor skill — foraging, botanizing, birding, hunting — it’s essential that we learn the ecosystems in which our desired organisms live. I’m not sure why ecological thinking is undervalued today, but I decided to do something about it.

Exploring Wild Ecosystems is my newest online course designed to help you gain ecological literacy. If you want to be able to read landscapes more effectively, consider enrolling today. Enrollment is currently open until Monday, September 30.

To learn more, and to register, click here.

I hope to see you in there!

—Adam Haritan