Growing throughout Oak Bay’s Uplands neighbourhood is a tiny mushroom that if ingested could cost you your life.
“One of its names is the silent assassin,” said Chris Hyde-Lay, manager of park services for the municipality of Oak Bay.
More commonly referred to as the death cap mushroom, the fungus is not native to North America.
The mushroom shares a symbiotic relationship with certain species of imported trees, growing from their roots. Now the deadly mushroom has evolved, learning to grow from B.C.’s native Garry oaks.
“This is where we are finding the most of them, which is around the root plate and out into the root system of these various trees,” said Hyde-Lay, standing underneath a large tree in Uplands.
He says the reason the neighbourhood is the epicenter for this dangerous mushroom is because so many of those imported trees were planted along the streets’ boulevards.
“We’ve picked about 600 off of this boulevard already this year,” said the park services manager.
Oak Bay crews have been busy picking those silent assassins throughout the municipality since they began to grow.
There are an estimated 10,000 species of mushrooms worldwide, and some can be as deadly as the death cap, but they kill the most people.
“This one species, the death cap, is responsible for more than 90 per cent of deaths from mushroom poisoning,” said Andy MacKinnon, who is a forest ecologist by trade.
MacKinnon is an expert in all things fungi related. He says there is a reason for that shocking statistic.
“People often times confuse it with mushrooms like the Paddy Straw Mushroom or some other amanita species that they are used to eating,” said MacKinnon.
He says death cap mushrooms hold certain toxins that if ingested will circulate in your blood stream. Within the first six to 12 hours, you will experience an upset stomach.
“Then the symptoms will go away for up to three days,” said the forest ecologist.
During that time, often those who ingested the mushroom will forget about their recent illness.
“During that time the toxins continue to circulate in the blood stream and destroy liver and kidney cells,” said MacKinnon, which leads to organ failure and potentially death.
It’s recommended if you have death cap mushrooms growing in your yard to pick them using a rubber glove then dispose of them in the garbage. As well, keep you pets away from the deadly mushrooms in case they decide to snack on them.