The Fort Drum Garrison Safety Office is warning residents of Fort Drum, a military reservation in Jefferson County, New York, not to pick wild mushrooms. That’s because the safety office recently received a tip that there were some poisonous mushrooms growing near a community playground. In fact, the playground mushrooms were a deadly variety—Galerina marginata.
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“The Fort Drum Garrison Safety Office worked with the Directorate of Public Works to remove a crop of Funeral Bell (Galerina marginata) mushrooms from a community playground on post,” wrote the safety office in a notice on its website. “Officials caution community members against picking wild mushrooms. While foraging is a common recreational activity, it requires a certain amount of expertise to know what species of wild plants and mushrooms are safe.”
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The safety director, Joe Semones, said these toxic mushrooms are not a common sight near the playground.
“With all the rain we’ve been having, there are things growing that we normally wouldn’t see,” he said. “I have inspected that playground off and on now for 12 years, and there’s never been mushrooms there before.”
The Fort Drum Garrison Safety Office also provided the following safety information about foraging wild mushrooms:
- Never pick and eat wild mushrooms unless they’ve been identified by an expert
- Cooking doesn’t make a poisonous mushroom safe. In fact, the fumes created while cooking can be toxic
- Even non-poisonous mushrooms can cause unpleasant reactions in people who are sensitive to them
- Symptoms from eating poisonous mushrooms can be delayed for many hours
Header stock image by Javier Garcia Seijas/Getty Images
