Deadly Mushrooms

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I feel this is important, so I’m putting it in it’s own thread.

Due to the rare rainy humid climate in many areas of the world right now, we’ve starting seeing reports of deadly mushroom poisoning that we had never seen before. We just read of a dog in our city that died less than a day after eating a mushroom in their lawn. Kim and I had already started seeing many of these same mushrooms sprouting in our yard recently as well. We have started (while wearing rubber gloves) putting every mushroom we find into a plastic bag, then sealing the bag and putting it in the trash bin. We figure that this not only reduces the chance of anyone’s dog eating a mushroom from our grass while on a walk, but also reduces the number of air-born spores that could start to spread and grow more mushrooms.

The mushrooms we are most leery of (in our area) are white (though we also have some brown varieties we are removing). Below is a link to a wiki page about the “Destroying angel” mushroom species that we think are the main culprit in our area. Please don’t let your pets (especially dogs, and of course these are also deadly to humans) wander outside without close supervision, try to remove the mushrooms from your property, and spread this advice to your relatives and friends.

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Thanks for the post, @markwr. :+1:

I’ll keep an eye if one of those appear in my country.

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Destroying Angel was the centre of a crime in Midsommer Murders. One episode of the series. So odd to see people you know come across it. Last I knew, there’s no treatment after ingestion. :sob:

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Mushroom followup - Nitrogen Fertilizer

Our radio station mentioned the deadly “Destroying Angel mushrooms” many times throughout the morning, so it’s becoming quite the news story here.

This email is a follow-up to my prior email, since I decided to research longer-term solutions to eradicate future mushroom growth in the yard. Here is a summary of some of the results I found (with Nitrogen Fertilizer being the easiest long-term solution).

The destroying angel mushroom (Amanita virosa) is the most common poisonous mushroom in North America and unfortunately is also one of the most deadly mushrooms known to man. They should be removed from lawns to prevent children or pets from eating them. Permanent removal requires you to get rid of the conditions that cause the mushrooms to grow in the first place.

The first step begins the SHORT-TERM solution (to avoid near-term danger to pets, etc): Remove the mushroom bodies by hand, put them in plastic bags, seal the bags to prevent spores from creating new mushrooms, and throw the bags in the trash (do not compost the mushrooms nor put them in yard recycling bins). Grab the mushrooms low on the stalk to remove as much of the body as possible. Consider using plastic/rubber gloves, don’t touch your face while working, wash your gloves/hands well when done.

OPTIONAL MEDIUM-TERM step: Mix one tablespoon dish soap per gallon of water. Using a screwdriver, trowel, or other tool, make holes in the ground around the mushrooms. Then pour the soapy water into the holes, filling them up to the top. This should kill the existing mushroom “root” (picking mushrooms does not damage the mycelium, which lives underground and can grow another fruiting body NEXT YEAR).

But the LONG-TERM solution is this step: Apply a NITROGEN-RICH FERTILIZER to your lawn at a rate of 1 pound of actual nitrogen per 1,000 square feet of treated area. This fertilizer will speed up the decay of organic material in the soil, depriving the mushrooms of their nutrient source. Also, consider adding phosphorus and potassium, preferably in the ratio of 3 parts nitrogen, 1 part phosphorus, and 2 parts potassium. A nice side benefit is that this should also give a greener, healthier lawn.

Note: If you simply try to mow over the mushrooms, the spores will spread all over the lawn, so that’s a really bad idea.

Other considerations: Reduce the amount of water that’s making the area damp, seeing that mushrooms enjoy humid environments. Don’t starve the lawn from needed water, though. Mushrooms love the shade, so make sure to let the sunlight into the area as much as possible. For instance, pruning the trees is an effective way to do so.

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Holy cow. I thought they only grew in woods and such. That is a lot of work to get rid of them. Worse than weeds. Be careful and good luck!

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Thanks @Danacscott - but the main reason I’m posting this information is to let everyone here know they should be aware of this growing problem (worse this year than ever before). These mushrooms grow in many if not most areas of the planet, and their unusual abundance this year is making the news.

So, folks, just think to glance at the ground whenever you’re outside (they can sprout and grow very quickly, like overnight). If you see mushrooms on your property they could be "very deadly", especially if you have children or pets living on the property. :eyes:

Remember: “one of the most deadly mushrooms known to man”.

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I’m genuinely curious to know where this is considered surprising information. I grew up in a desert and now live within easy driving distance of the “mushroom capital of the world” (no joke). At no point at either extreme have I ever considered an unidentified fungus to be even remotely safe. I’ve also never felt the need to do anything about it. They’re a natural part of the environment and they serve an important role in the ecosystem.

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I can’t help this…

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I see :joy:. Love the old Japanese shows. I wanna watch this. They were really creative with the costuming of the monsters

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So I actually remember reading about the Destroying Angel in the What If? book I have (written by the creator of xkcd) as part of the question of “…if someone’s DNA suddenly vanished, how long would that person last?”

The section says that if you eat a destroying angel, you’ll feel okay for probably the rest of the day. Later, either at night or the next day, you’ll start exhibiting cholera-like symptoms. So vomiting, abdominal pain, severe diarrhea, etc. After this is what is called the “walking ghost” phase, where you feel better but basically your body’s cells are accumulating irreversible damage. It’s at this walking ghost phase where your fate is probably sealed. The damage happens as these mushrooms contain amatoxin. This binds to an enzyme that is used to read information from DNA, interrupting the process which the cells follows DNA’s instructions, thus causing damage to whichever cells it collects in. Since the liver and kidney act as filters for the body, these are typically the first organs it collects in resulting in their failure.

(please note I’m trying to not copy the book verbatim so it reads differently in the book.)

The best guess answer to the losing the DNA question was days or hours due to infection (loss of immune system) or systemic organ failure.

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Very few adults would ever consider eating any wild mushroom. I created this thread to warn folks that have kids, pets, or live in a neighborhood where other people walk their dogs near your property. In those cases, it is a good idea to remove the mushrooms from your property, to potentially save the lives of children, dogs, and cats. I also created this thread because in some areas of the world right now, this very deadly variety is showing up in people’s yards in record numbers.

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Good call, them critters will try and eat everything they find. Cables, toys, utensils, weeds, berries and all kinds of feces.
I assume dogs/pets might do that too.

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It’s happening here too.

From Fakebook:

On Sat., Sept 26th at 4pm we let Obie, our 9mth old puppy, outside. We noticed right away that he started chewing on something in the ground. We pulled it and noticed it was a mushroom. I looked around the yard and noticed many more different kind of mushrooms and began to dig them all up and throw them away. Within 15-20min Obie started drooling. Which he has never done before. Then he proceeded to throw up and have diarrhea. We called the vet immediately and they informed us to pull food away and only provide water and that in a few hours the symptoms would subside. By 8pm he was done with vomiting and diarrhea and was now a very tired puppy. We stayed up with him until 11pm at which time he went into his crate to lay down and go to sleep. When we woke in the morning at 7:30am, he had passed. Due to the symptoms he had that morning he had been gone for some time. So within 10hrs that mushroom had killed our beloved Obie.

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While I wouldn’t tell them to their face, as that’d be unnecessarily kicking them while undoubtedly having a hard time. But this is the result of their irresponsibility, this course of events was entirely obvious and preventable. I grew up with lawn mushrooms of various kinds all of them bad to some degree or another. When I was too young to know any better the lawn was carefully and painstakingly kept free of them. A puppy or a human baby for that matter will put stuff in their mouth, young of all species explores the world through chewing on it.

Just saying poisonous mushrooms are not a new phenomenon, I don’t know why we’re acting surprised about them right now. The majority of mushrooms are not edible even if they wont kill you. If you bring a new dog to your home then common sense ought to be to make sure your environment is free from stuff that will harm it if ingested.

That mushroom didn’t kill Obie, their irresponsibility did.

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It was lack of knowledge. When something seems obvious to me, I don’t assume it is obvious to everyone else. We each have our own life experiences that teach us wisdom as the years go by. This thread is hopefully one of those teaching moments for those unaware.

This situation was actually a learning experience for me, even though I’m 71 years old. When I first saw these mushrooms in my yard, I removed them for the sake of landscape beauty. It was days later that I learned of the death of a puppy in our city after it ate one of these mushrooms. So very sad, and I wanted to at least take some steps to save other pets, so I researched, emailed family and friends, and posted here. If I, as an experienced adult had not seen the danger, then it is not a surprise to me that some other adults also needed to be educated.

So, I do not call their actions irresponsible, I call them miss-informed or uneducated. Once they gain the necessary knowledge, their actions will reflect that. Remember, even things that are “common sense” are not commonly known to 100% of all people.

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Well then that only takes their irresponsibility one step further up the line. I don’t really want to be judging people but if anyone looks at a lawn full of mushrooms and think that’s probably a fine place to let your puppy roam free then I would call you actually properly stupid. If their excuse was lacking knowledge then they could not possibly have gone to much effort to research the responsibilities and demands of owning a pet, much less a baby one and by that measure alone shouldn’t have been allowed to adopt.

If someone kept their yard full of broken glass and let a puppy roam free across it they would be charged with animal cruelty by the first neighbour who saw the situation. Knowledge about which specific mushrooms are and are not edible I can certainly agree is something that one needs to attain through effort and research. Knowing that random unknown mushrooms are a bad idea to eat is however not, that is and should be exceedingly common knowledge. I would surmise they never tried to pick those mushrooms in order to feed themselves, knowing that’d be a bad idea. I would also consider the knowledge that babies of all sorts put stuff in their mouth obvious and wide spread. All they had to do was to put those two together and the course of action should have been obvious.

In the end I can only see carelessness and irresponsibility here.

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I see this

IM AoM
IM AoM1280×960 258 KB

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Still, I hope to inform my friends of a situation I had been unaware of, in two respects.

  • First, I had not even noticed the mushrooms were there at first, because they tend to grow in damp hidden, shady places.

  • Second, that this danger is higher than ever this season, and thus worth the effort of looking in all the nooks and crannies where these mushrooms might grow.

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This is another case of what climate change has done. We NEVER had those things here in the yards. I have been here over 20 years and nothing. It’s all the rain and moisture which we don’t normally get this time of year. I have, at the moment, pools of water everywhere and it’s up over your feet and it’s still raining.

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