Mushroom News

I thought this notice from Kris Carter of the state lab was sufficient interest as to post it for general information, please see below:

Quick update: The mushroom Dr. Hahn found tested positive for amatoxin on the AMATOXtest.

In addition to the North End and Warm Springs, I think we can add downtown Boise as a neighborhood Death Cap mushroom has been found in.

Best,

Kris

Kris K. Carter, DVM, MPVM, DACVPM

CAPT, USPHS; Career Epidemiology Field Officer, CDC

Bureau of Environmental Health and Communicable Diseases

Division of Public Health

Idaho Department of Health and Welfare

Desk Number: (208)334-6674 Fax Number: (208)332-7307

Kris.Carter@dhw.idaho.gov

While the location is important, the tree associations are critical. The tree should be annotated to the species level as we add new records for Amanita phalloides. So far, always with oak in Boise.

In the west coast Amanita phalloides doesn’t associate with Pinaceae and is exclusive with Fagales. In Boise, from that group some are missing like beech, and oak is the most common from the ones we have. Others in that group, like Chestnut are possible associates, but undocumented so far.

Maybe it could be a good practice to upload data from the tree as a separate record to iNaturalist. We could get additional identification helping with the tree, there.

Ada county has only 6 oak species on record from a pool of about 80 species for western NA. I have not tried it yet, but it looks doable since the leaves look quite different from each other.