Unsuccessful Mayo quest for one of the tastiest wild treats of the year

COUNTRYFILE

THERE have been so many reports of edible spring mushrooms this year that I just had to go and find some.

Edible, I say, but they are so much more than that. Take St. George's mushroom, for instance.

This is one of the tastiest wild treats of the year. Perhaps we value these so highly simply because they are the first to appear after the long barren spell that is late winter.

Each year I find them by the basketful. This year, mycophiles the length and breadth of Britain and Ireland have them coming out of their ears.

As for me? Well, haven't I been to all the usual spots? Didn't I search that field where they always grow?

There should have been an abundance of those off-white globes, with their slightly squashed appearance and distinctive odour. There are none. Not one.

Undeterred, I went to that secret woodland where an ancient path grows morels. I must rephrase that – where an ancient path once, allegedly, grew morels.

Once, just once in my entire life, did I find these highly sought after fungi. That was in the grounds of Turlough House, where they were growing at the edge of the flower beds.

Then somebody told me about the ones that supposedly in the wood. Perhaps they did so to get me out of the way while they went down to Turlough to gather a reliable harvest.

The price of morel mushrooms varies from year to year. One report from the UK presently has them at around £100 per kilo.

If only we could find the right spot we could gather several kilograms over the short growing season, which will be over by the end of this month.

Not that we would sell them, even if the law allowed us to do so.

There are some things that are hard to understand. Wild mushrooms can be picked in France or Austria or in just about any other part of the world.

They can be flown from wherever they are grown into Ireland, pass from wholesaler to retailer to gourmet chef and to customer, with everybody adding a little (or sometimes a lot) to the price.

Yet we are not permitted to gather and sell our own wild mushrooms. Why is this? Does anybody know?

Searching for edible fungi is occasionally very rewarding. As summer advances and the ground warms up we shall find a wide variety of tasty treats. In some areas field mushrooms are already appearing.

That we normally associate these with late summer and autumn might tell us something about our changing climate. Who knows what other changes we shall see as the rest of the world continues to warm?

We don't want to disappoint those who find themselves looking forward to an extra couple of degrees now and then, but one recent scientific report suggests that as our friends living in mainland Europe get to enjoy proper summer heatwaves, the climate of Ireland will likely come to resemble that of Iceland.

The reason for this, apparently, is that those plumes of warm air that originate in northern Africa like to travel in a north-westerly direction, sometimes reaching well inside the Arctic Circle. All that heat forces the cold Arctic air out, and yes, it comes down over us.

I recently looked at a heat map of the northern hemisphere. Almost all of it was colored in various shades of red, indicating warmer than normal temperatures. There was one big blue blob. Where was that situated? Right over Ireland. More specifically, it was right over Mayo.

If the country does become warmer we shall find morels. If it gets colder at least we shall find winter mushrooms like blewits.