Oregon -- Deadly Death-Cap Mushroom Found Again In Southern Oregon

MEDFORD, Ore. - Veteran mushroom hunter Gordon Larum had no trouble identifying the Amanita phalloides, with its shiny, yellowish-green cap and its creamy white stem. Many know it as the death cap, or death cup.

And it's turning up again in southern Oregon.

"I was amazed," Larum said. "In 23 years of looking for fungi here, it hadn't turned up."

One of the most lethal mushrooms, the death cap is a native of Europe that has been found in scattered locations along the Pacific Coast.

It was discovered in Ashland's Lithia Park several years ago and has been identified around San Francisco, Vancouver, Wash., and Victoria, B.C.

The death cap is reportedly delicious, but it attacks the liver. Symptoms may not appear for 72 hours, making treatment difficult. Some people have survived a taste of phalloides only by receiving a liver transplant.

"This is by far the most notorious and most feared poisonous mushroom," Larum said.

Like other mushrooms, phalloides reproduces and spreads from microscopic spores.

Larum concludes phalloides spores may have hitched a ride into Medford in the root balls of nursery stock.He found the mushroom beside a non-native birch.

"You can't just go foraging indiscriminately for mushrooms," he said. "If you don't know what it is, don't eat it."