Location One location that most of us forget to remember is our own back yard. Since morels appear in the low lands first, this gives us an early start. Morels can grow in your lawn, in the wood mulch under the rhododendrons, along hedges, and in old fruit orchards. The best picking areas are on the east side of the Cascade Mountains. Locations of forest fires can yield unbelievably large quantities the following spring.
Morels seem to become adaptive to certain areas.
They may be found by elm trees in one state and by oaks in another. Here, morels may be found anywhere. They may grow near trees in conifer forests, in open flat grass land, in bare dirt areas, or out of needle duff. If the season is dry, it may pay to look in gullies and other areas of water runoff and under logs or little tree seedlings whose shade may have saved moisture for the mushroom. Yet, the most dense fruiting of morels that I have ever seen was in a large clear-cut area where the stumps were pulled and the weather was hot.