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Flooding fills forests with fungi
©Associated Press VIENNA, Austria -- Austria's worst flooding in centuries has left behind a deadly legacy: a bumper crop of mushrooms that's luring amateur pickers to damp forests -- and sending some to the hospital. At least two people have died after picking and eating poisonous mushrooms, and scores have sought treatment, said Dr. Helmut Schiel of Austria's poison control center. Several have required intensive care, including some who needed liver transplants, he said. Many have suffered from painful diarrhea and vomiting. Heavy rains last month left fields and forests sodden, creating perfect conditions for the growth of mushrooms and other fungi. Many nature lovers combine forest hikes with wild mushroom gathering, hoping to collect edible varieties for mushroom schnitzels or goulash. But those meals could have a nasty aftertaste. Of the roughly 3,000 kinds of mushrooms that thrive in Austria, only a couple of hundred varieties are considered edible. Two hundred are strongly poisonous, and 10 are deadly, said Walter Rauch, who works for the city agency that oversees Vienna's outdoor markets. The agency offers free inspections of wild mushrooms. The most common culprit in serious poisoning cases is a fungi known in German as the Knollenblaetterpilz -- the amanita. Its common English name -- the death cap -- more accurately describes the mushroom's traits. Eating even the tiniest morsel could be fatal. "In recent weeks, the forests have been full of this deadly mushroom," Rauch said. Some mushroom pickers mistake that mushroom for edible fungi such as the tasty parasol mushroom. For experts, however, such mistakes are unthinkable -- the death cap has a white stem and greenish or bright white cap, while the parasol mushroom has a brownish stem and brownish dots on top. "It is very, very important to have every single mushroom examined by professionals," Schiel said. "Just looking in a mushroom book is not enough." With all the risks involved, why bother? Karl Syrovatka, a retired businessman who eats wild mushrooms at least once a week all year, offered this explanation: "There is nothing more relaxing than to search for mushrooms in the forest. You forget everything else. You're completely concentrated on one goal: Where are the mushrooms?" he said. All Austrian cities offer free mushroom inspections. This year, Vienna has recorded at least twice as many inspections as usual, Rauch said. He expects the number to swell to 5,000 before the season ends in October.
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