January 15, 2002
Couple recovering after eating ‘death cap’ mushrooms
By TRAVIS SEMMES
Santa Cruz Sentinel staff writer
WATSONVILLE — Phil Carpenter manages the information hotline for the Fungus Federation of Santa Cruz and is usually the person called by hospital staff when a mushroom poisoning occurs.
This past weekend, his phone rang.
A couple visiting Watsonville from Jordan fell gravely ill after eating a stew made with deadly poisonous "death cap" mushrooms they had picked in South County. They were recovering Monday and their conditions had improved, hospital officials said.
The husband and wife became nauseous after picking and eating the Amanita phalloides, said Dr. Ed Wakil of the California Pacific Medical Center’s liver transplant department. The couple was rushed to the center after checking themselves in to Watsonville Community Hospital when they noticed the telltale signs of poisoning: vomiting, severe diarrhea and dehydration.
Wakil said both victims, who authorities have not named, initially were in danger of needing liver transplants due to the toxins in the wild mushrooms, but their conditions had improved to the point where the need for transplants diminished.
The man’s condition had improved more than the woman’s, but both remained in intensive care Monday.
The story of how the couple was sickened did not surprise Carpenter, who runs a chemistry lab in Watsonville. He said many poison victims are new to California.
"We’re seeing ethnic pickers — especially Southeast Asians collecting (death caps), thinking it’s something they used to find at home."
He doesn’t know how the couple made the mistake of picking death caps a week ago, but said there are many species of mushrooms from around the world that are amazingly similar and can only be told apart through DNA tests. Complicating matters, some poisonous mushrooms are eaten by people in other countries. The mushrooms are made less toxic through their preparation.
"Russians are known to eat mushrooms that we don’t touch," he said, explaining that poisonous mushrooms are sometimes boiled in water for hours, then soaked in a salt brine.
But techniques that might work in Eastern Europe aren’t guaranteed to work in Watsonville, where the death cap is common during the rainy season. The greenish tan, roughly 8-inch-tall caps are found just about everywhere: along creeks, in forests and meadows, even in manicured lawns.
"I heard these people were experienced," Carpenter said of the sickened couple. "I don’t know if they were mycologically inclined or just traditional pickers. My suspicion is that they were just traditional pickers."
Those are mushroom hunters without formal training, many of whom learned the skill through oral tradition.
The mushroom season this winter was a bit of an odd one, Carpenter said. Many species of mushrooms usually found early in the season didn’t appear at all, and few Amanita phalloides have been seen so far by members of the Fungus Federation of Santa Cruz, the area chapter of a national group dedicated to educating people about mushrooms.
The group sponsors the annual Fungus Fair in Santa Cruz, held this past weekend.
As a mycologist and mushroom collector, Carpenter doesn’t shun hunting for fungus when traveling abroad, but doesn’t do it himself.
Contacting those who know what mushrooms grow in an area before picking can be a matter of life and death if you plan to eat your find.
"I can recognize an Amanita (variety) anywhere," he said. "But I certainly wouldn’t eat a mushroom without local knowledge."
There are more than 70 different species in the Amanita genus recorded in noted mycologist David Arora’s field guide, "Mushroom’s Demystified." Some of them are highly esteemed and edible, like the coccora (Amanita laneii) or the springtime amanita (Amanita velosa), but when it comes to the Amanita genus, Carpenter warns, it’s not good to experiment.
Sentinel staff writer Travis Semmes writes a column on native plants. It appears every Thursday in the Home and Garden section. He can be reached at tsemmes@santa-cruz.com.
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