Steppe morel: photos, habitat, and Ukraine's Red Book status

The steppe morel (Morchella steppicola) is a spring mushroom of the open steppe. Its round cap is covered in dense, winding ridges that look like a maze or a brain, and it sits on a short, thick white stem. It grows from late March to May on steppe slopes, pastures, fallow land and burnt ground, and needs no forest nearby at all. It's no longer listed in the Red Book of Ukraine: it was taken off the list in 2021, once the mushroom turned out to be far more widespread than anyone had thought.

We came across it in mid-April 2025 on a steppe slope, among young grass on ground blackened as if by fire. From a distance it looks like a clod of earth; up close, like a small pale brain. Below we show exactly what to look for.

What the steppe morel looks like

The steppe morel is easy to recognize once you know three things:

• Cap round or egg-shaped, often slightly flattened, dirty brownish-gray or ochre, turning yellowish as it dries. Hollow inside and fused to the stem.
• Surface made of dense, winding ridges with a network of small, irregular pits between them. That's exactly how mycologists describe its cap: “brain-like”, with tightly packed, irregular, maze-like ridges. The common morel, by contrast, has distinct cells, like a honeycomb.
• Stem short, thick, white or grayish-white, wrinkled lengthwise. It starts out solid, and with age a few hollow chambers form inside.

Size varies a lot. According to the 2009 Red Book of Ukraine, the fruiting body can reach 15 cm tall, but mycologists also record small finds. Ours was about the size of a walnut.

In the first photo, a young steppe morel has just pushed up through the grass. The stem is barely visible, and the mushroom looks like a pale ochre ball covered all over in winding folds.

Laid in a palm, it shows what its stem is like: short, white and ribbed, as if gathered into folds. The cap sits tight on it, with no free, skirt-like edge.

Where and when it grows

The steppe morel is a mushroom of the steppe and forest-steppe. The Red Book of Ukraine and a later review by mycologist Vasyl Heluta (2017) name these habitats: virgin steppe slopes, pastures, fallow land, sparse shelterbelts, burnt ground, and also disturbed sites, for example along railway tracks or on pastures trampled by livestock. It feeds on humus in the soil, so it needs no partner tree. Outside Ukraine it is known from Moldova and Hungary to Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan.

It fruits early, in March–April, in places until May. After a wet winter and a warm, wet spring it can be plentiful, sometimes forming “fairy rings” of 15–20 mushrooms. In dry springs, though, it may not fruit at all for several years running.

Here's our mushroom against the steppe slope: young April grass and a few still-bare trees on the horizon. This is exactly the kind of place where it pays to watch your feet.

If you only look for morels in the woods, the steppe one is easy to miss. It is short, hides among last year's grass, and its color blends in with dry leaves and soil.

An old steppe morel

Two days later we photographed another one, already old and dried out. We're less certain it's a steppe morel than we were with the first: the ridges on the cap have pulled apart, and the surface now looks more like a honeycomb than a maze. That happens with old morels, but it also makes them easier to confuse with another species.

Here's the same mushroom in a palm: dried out, with thin, brittle ridges. A mushroom like this doesn't belong in the basket, since old morels spoil quickly. We explain why you shouldn't take old mushrooms at all in the article why you shouldn't pick old or wormy mushrooms.

How it differs from other morels

The common morel grows under broadleaf trees, most often on limestone soils, and often turns up in gardens. Its cap is egg-shaped, with deep honeycomb-like cells between the ridges, and its stem is taller and thinner. The steppe morel's ridges wind and pack tightly into a maze, its cap is rounder, and its stem is short and thick.

The black morel has an elongated, pointed cap with dark ridges that run mostly from top to bottom. It's hard to confuse with the steppe morel. We cover forest morels in detail in the article black morel and common morel: how to tell them apart.

The steppe morel really is a species in its own right, not a form of the common morel. The Ukrainian mycologist Mariia Zerova described it in 1941 from a specimen collected in Ukraine. DNA analysis has shown that it's the oldest lineage to branch off within the “yellow” morel group, which also includes the common morel.

How not to confuse it with the false morel

Take care here. The false morel also has a winding, “brain-like” cap, and that one is poisonous. Here's how to tell them apart:

• Color. The false morel is pinkish-brown or reddish-brown, turning almost black with age. The steppe morel is brownish-gray or ochre, and yellowish when dried out.
• Surface. The steppe morel's whole cap is covered with a network of small pits between the ridges. The false morel's cap is made of large lobes and folds, with no such network.
• Cross-section. Inside, the false morel's cap is divided into irregular chambers, with the folds fused together in places. A morel's cap is a thin wall around a single cavity. An old steppe morel's stem can also have several hollows, so look at the cap specifically.
• Habitat. The false morel grows under conifers, most often under pines on sandy soil. The steppe morel grows on the open steppe. But near pine plantations the two worlds can meet, so don't rely on habitat alone.

The false morel contains gyromitrin, which the body converts into monomethylhydrazine. This damages the liver, the nervous system and the blood. Boiling and drying reduce the amount of toxin but don't remove it completely, so there's no safe way to prepare it. Read more in the article false morel: why this spring mushroom is dangerous.

Why it was removed from Ukraine's Red Book

For a long time the steppe morel was thought to be rare: after it was described in 1941, almost nothing more was heard of it. It went into the Red Book of the USSR in 1984, and then into the second (1996) and third (2009) editions of the Red Book of Ukraine as a rare species.

But it was precisely the attention paid to the mushroom that changed everything. Mycologists and amateur foragers began finding it in new places. By 2009 it was already known from at least twelve regions of Ukraine, and in spring 2017 reports of finds came in from many new sites, in places with hundreds of mushrooms. Heluta concluded that in southern Ukraine it is a common species. Local people traditionally pick it in large quantities, and this has no effect on its numbers. So the scientist proposed removing it from the Red Book, and Order No. 111 of Ukraine's Ministry of Environmental Protection, dated 15 February 2021, did just that.

One catch: the redbook-ua.org website still shows the steppe morel's page from the 2009 edition, with the status “rare”. The document in force is the 2021 order, and this mushroom is no longer on its list of protected species.

Heluta did, however, recommend protecting the species at regional level along the northern edge of its range. The steppe it grows in needs protection too: virgin grassland is preserved for its rare plants, and the 2009 Red Book listed plowing of the steppe among the reasons for this mushroom's decline, alongside picking and overgrazing. So if you're lucky enough to find it, admire it and take photos rather than picking every last one.

Is the steppe morel edible?

Yes, like other morels it's edible, but only after thorough cooking. The 2009 Red Book even calls it tasty. Raw or undercooked morels cause digestive upset. Nobody has yet pinned down which substance is responsible, but heat destroys it. So boil morels for at least 15 minutes and pour off the water: the heat itself is what matters most, and draining is a customary extra precaution. We explain how long to boil different mushrooms in the article how long to boil mushrooms.

One more thing: even well-cooked morels, eaten in large amounts, can cause a neurological disorder with trembling, dizziness and an unsteady gait. French toxicologists described 129 such cases; symptoms appeared about 12 hours after the meal, more often in people who'd eaten a lot of morels. So eat morels in moderation, and if you feel unwell after a mushroom dish, see a doctor. We've set out what to do while you wait for help in mushroom poisoning: symptoms and first aid.