April Is Mushroom Hunting Season In Illinois

Love morel mushrooms? You can find them in Illinois during the month of April. 

So full disclosure. I've gotten a little addicted to TikTok. I signed up for it months ago because a friend had an account and just needed to start with some followers. I didn't pay much attention to it at all. Then I accidentally opened it a few weeks ago and have lost countless hours watching some of the dumbest stuff ever. It's not bad or mean, there's just a lot of dumb stuff on there.

Now most of it is complete garbage but about 1 out of every 10 videos is very interesting and one of them is this lady that talks about hunting for morel mushrooms. I'd find a link but honestly, I'm not sure how to do that. I was wondering if you could find morels in Illinois and it turns out that it's almost time to start looking.

According to the website Sciencing.com, the morel season in southern and central Illinois begins in late March and early April. The morel season in northern Illinois begins about 2 weeks later.

They're apparently pretty easy to identify:

Morel mushrooms have distinctive conical, fluted and pitted caps. Morel caps range in color from nut brown to black and look like a walnut husk with deep pits and folds.

They also can grow in basically every wooded area in the Stateline:

The best place to look for morels in Illinois is along the edge of forested areas where you find oak, elm, aspen and ash trees growing.

The whole season lasts just a few weeks so get out and forage while you can.