Poison Mushrooms Not Easy to Evict, S.D. Park Officials Say

San Diego County Park and Recreation personnel are puzzled about how to eradicate poison mushrooms found recently in Balboa Park because local agriculture officials say efforts to rid the area of the deadly fungus could be lethal to surrounding plant life.

Bob Kerekes, a mushroom expert who does volunteer work for the botany department of the Natural History Museum, recently found about 15 of the deadly mushrooms in an oak grove east of the Pershing Drive and 26th Street intersection. Since then, all 15 have been picked and examined, but Kerekes said the mushrooms will grow back, and they may be growing in other areas of the park as well.

This is the second time the Amanita ocreata mushrooms have been found in San Diego County. Two years ago, four undocumented aliens died after lapsing into comas when they ingested some of the wild mushrooms in Escondido.

“If you are asking if we are going to get rid of these mushrooms, I would think so, very definitely,” said Jack Krasovich, deputy director of the San Diego County Park and Recreation Department. “But right now I am in the dark about how we would do this.”

Krasovich said he plans to contact commissioners of the county Agriculture Department for advice on how to proceed. But Department of Agriculture plant pathologist Ken Sims said eradication would be costly to the surrounding plant life as well.

“You could chop off the tops but that’s analogous to picking an apple--the tree is still there,” Sims said. “You normally don’t get rid of mushrooms because what you see aboveground is just the spore stage, it’s what is underneath that you have to kill.

“These mushrooms grow in grassy areas or are associated with oak trees. To get rid of them, it would have to be fumigation. This would kill the roots of the oaks and other plant life, too.”

Nevertheless, Agriculture Department Assistant Commissioner Ray Rinder said the staff will discuss ways to deal with the poisonous mushrooms “safely” if Krasovich asks.

“I really don’t know what we could do to get rid of them--the staff would have to discuss it,” Rinder said. “I don’t think we have ever had this type of request brought up before. I don’t know what else we would do besides go in and make sure they are knocked down. We’d have to look through all our literature and discuss various methods.”

Kerekes said eradication would harm surrounding trees because of their environmental relationship with the mycelium, the scientific name for a mushroom.

“The fungus circles around the smaller roots of the tree, breaks down complex compounds in the soil, and then feeds them into the tree,” Kerekes said. “The tree then turns around and feeds them back into the mycelium. About 70% of trees have this type of relationship.

“I’ve found this type of mushroom all the way to Campo and Lake Morena in the snow. Any other oak tree in the park could have these growing next to it right now. I even found some in Lake Morena right next to edible ones, and this is the danger. People should know not to eat wild mushrooms because it could be a fatal mistake.”

Public Health Officer Donald Ramras said a poisonous mushroom could easily be mistaken for an edible one even by experienced mushroom pickers, such as Asians and Vietnamese who commonly gather their own produce from fields.

“We strongly urge people not to pick any kind of wild mushroom for eating purposes and we always have,” Ramras said. “I have known people who have limited themselves to picking one or two types of mushrooms that they thought they could identify. They picked the same mushroom year after year, but then they picked the wrong one.

“Forget the myths, too. There is no magic test. If you drop a mushroom in something silver, it will not tarnish it if it is poison. That’s a myth. And eradicating one type of mushroom would be destroying an ecological niche. It isn’t too wise to fool with the balance of nature. My best advice is: You want mushrooms--go to the supermarket.”

Symptoms of the poison occur 6 to 24 hours after ingestion and include severe vomiting, abdominal pain and diarrhea, said Anthony Manoguerra, director of the Regional Poison Center at UC San Diego Medical Center. The symptoms then go away for several hours, then reappear as liver and kidney failure and eventually death.

“There is nothing we can do if people wait several days after being poisoned,” Manoguerra said. “Those four men didn’t come in until several days later. If they get here quickly, we could remove some of those mushrooms from their stomachs. Maybe we could help, but it depends on how poisonous the mushrooms are.”

Health authorities also suspect that five Laotians became very ill with signs of liver damage in 1982 because they had eaten similar mushrooms gathered in a Lakeside field. Manoguerra said it is believed that all five survived because they ate a species less poisonous than those found in Balboa Park.