A culinary quest for the best mushrooms led this Maine professor back into the woods

PORTLAND PRESS HERALD • October 17, 2021

Jean Yarbrough already knew how to identify chanterelles, a golden mushroom much sought after by cooks. She’d been harvesting those from the woods around her home ever since a Bowdoin colleague told her they grew there and taught her to spot them. “Chanterelles were the only game in town for me. I just thought, I want to know what else is out here.” Up until then, her late husband, Richard Morgan, who taught constitutional law at Bowdoin, was the outdoorsman in the family, an avid fly fisherman, bird hunter and a Registered Maine Guide. “I never really liked the woods,” Yarbrough said, “and it wasn’t until I discovered this mushroom thing …”