The Omnivore's Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals

by Michael Pollan

Mycologists I talked to later confirmed Anthony’s hunch. The current thinking is that the morels found in pine forests are a mycorrhizal species for whom the death of their pine associates represents a crisis: Suddenly there are no more roots supplying them with food. So the fungus fruits, sending up morels to release trillions of spores that the wind will loft far from this blasted forest. In effect, the morels fruit in order to escape the burn, dispatching their genes to colonize new pine lands before the organism starves to death. Humans don’t figure in their plans, though it may be that animals like us that eat morels do help them disperse their spores as we move them around on the way to our plates. Does hunting morels hurt the organism? Probably no more than picking apples hurts the tree, and because the morels do such a good job of hiding from us, there will always be plenty that escape our notice, each capable of releasing literally billions of spores.