Death Cap Mushroom Danger (The Atlantic article)

As if exploring vape pens and foul balls aren't enough to worry about:

Death-Cap Mushrooms Are Spreading Across North America

https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2019/02/deadly-mushroom-arri...

[The first death caps to appear on the West Coast hit Northern California in 1938. Since then, Amanita phalloides has been a constant menace to people in the Bay Area. Vo said that an outbreak of poisonings typically follows a rainy season; in November of 2016, after a long spell of warm weather and copious rain, the Bay Area Mycological Society got in touch with the California Poison Control System hotline, warning that death caps were sprouting up. “Five days after that, we started getting calls,” she said.]

[How a newly introduced mushroom and its underground cobweb impacts the life around it is poorly understood. Much about the life cycles and taxonomy of fungi remains elusive. Fungi were not given their own kingdom—now known as the “fifth kingdom”—until 1968. Before that, mushrooms were categorized as plants. Genetically and evolutionarily, they are closer to animal than plant. Mycology is a relatively new science, and researchers are only now beginning to understand how instrumental fungi are in almost every ecosystem, not only in breaking down and recycling organic matter, but also in concentrating nutrients for plant life and acting as chemical communicators.]