Deadliest mushroom growing in Canadian province

By Barry Ellsworth

TRENTON, Ont. 

The world’s deadliest mushroom is flourishing in the backyards and parks of cities in the province of British Columbia, Canadian media reported Wednesday.

Known as the death cap, the Amanita phalloides is responsible for an estimated 90 percent of fatal poisonings worldwide, the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC), Canada’s national radio and television broadcaster, reported.

It is believed that the mushroom, virtually unknown in British Columbia 20 years ago, arrived on the roots of imported trees, including the European oak and chestnut. The trees were used in a bid to beautify boulevards and streets.

“We’re looking at many, many locations now where the suitable host trees are just beginning to produce the death cap mushroom,” Paul Kroeger, a mushroom consultant on poisonings in B.C., told the CBC.

It is especially prevalent in Vancouver, Victoria and the Fraser Valley.

The plain-looking white mushroom appears similar to the edible straw mushroom. One mushroom picker in Victoria ingested the death cap earlier this week and is in serious condition at a hospital, the CBC reported. While no one has died from eating a death cap, there have been three poisonings, according to the B.C. Centre for Disease Control.

British Columbia has thousands of mushroom types and picking is popular. Mycological (fungi) societies in Vancouver hold regular mushroom walks, so officials have warned pickers to be wary.

“It’s worthwhile learning how to recognize this particular species because of the consequences if you accidentally eat it,” Andy MacKinnon, a biologist and forest ecologist who teaches mushroom identification, told the CBC. “Absolutely the best way to learn mushrooms is to go out with other people who know their mushrooms.”

In poisoning cases, about 60 percent of the toxin in the death cap attacks the body through the liver, and 40 percent through the kidneys, causing organ failure, Slate.com reported.

No figure on the number of deaths worldwide was immediately available, but in 2014, the Dominican hospital in Santa Cruz, California, reported treating more than 60 patients poisoned by amatoxin, the toxic substance in the mushroom, Slate reported.

One cap is enough to kill and death occurs in 50 to 90 percent of poisoning cases, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration reported.