Season
What is fruiting in March
7 of the species on this site fruit in March, and one of them is deadly. Seasons here are the ones on each species sheet, and they shift with latitude and with the year: a warm autumn runs late everywhere. Treat a month as a prompt to look, never as confirmation of what you have found.
Out this month and deadly
False morel. These are listed first below rather than buried, because the reason to know what is fruiting is at least as much about what to leave as what to take.
Deadly
False morel
Gyromitra esculenta
Cut it lengthwise. A true morel is one continuous hollow chamber from cap to stem base. This is stuffed.
white spore print
Toxic
Sulphur tuft
Hypholoma fasciculare
Yellow-green gills. No edible clustered wood mushroom has them.
black spore print
Not worth eating
Chaga
Inonotus obliquus
Black cracked charcoal-like mass on a LIVING BIRCH, rusty orange inside.
brown spore print
Not worth eating
Turkey tail
Trametes versicolor
Fine WHITE PORES on the underside. The many look-alikes have a smooth underside, a maze-like one, or a rusty one.
white spore print
Edible, with conditions
Morel
Morchella americana, M. esculenta and relatives
Pitted like a honeycomb, and completely hollow when cut lengthwise.
white spore print
Edible
Enoki, velvet shank
Flammulina velutipes and F. filiformis
The dark velvety stem base, on a sticky orange cap fruiting in midwinter on wood.
white spore print
Choice
Oyster mushroom
Pleurotus ostreatus and relatives
White decurrent gills on a stemless or side-stemmed fan growing from wood.
white spore print
Just starting
False morel, Morel. Not out in February, out now.
Last month for these
Enoki, velvet shank. Gone by April.
A month in a table is not an identification. Every edible species on this page has at least one lookalike, several of them serious, and the season overlaps too. Take the spore print.