Mushroom poisoning surge hits immigrant communities harder Health experts say people used to foraging elsewhere in the world are confusing death caps with edible, visually similar mushrooms found in their home countries, and hospitalizations and deaths are on the rise. https://www.berkeleyside.org/2026/02/27/deadly-lookalikes Via metafilter
Completely unrelated and off-topic .. you lucky mothermushers: B.C. to adopt permanent daylight saving time
To avoid further hijacking this thread (though @allelopath can hijack his own thread if he wants to), I'd recommend any further comments on daylight saving time be made to the thread at British Columbia: - Should B.C. keep or drop daylight time? The province wants your input | UBC Botanical Garden Forums, where we've been talking about this since 2019. Opinions there are against it, but nobody listened to us.
I am surprised, that in Canada death caps are growing so early, even before the end of the astronomical winter. Luckily here in Estonia death caps don't grow so early days of the year of year. And no edible spring mushroom particularly resembles the death cap. I don't recall seeing any Amanitas growing here before the second half of May.
Did some quick research and found out, that the Piosh in Mam language is Lactarius mexicanus. Pretty different from the Death Cap, I think. Can't even imagine, how a member of a nation so familiar with foraging from woods can mistakenly identify an Amanita as a Lactarius.
