Science

The Teacher in Room 1214

Published

11 months ago

February 23, 2025

It was 45 seconds too late, but the teacher had a plan.

A gunman had just barraged her classroom with an AR-15, killing two students and injuring four others before turning to a classroom across the hall. The bullet-riddled walls were crumbling. Ceiling tiles were falling. If the shooter came back to kill more of her students, the teacher decided, she would stand up and shout, “We love you.”

The teacher was Ivy Schamis, whose husband would be waiting at home with a Valentine’s Day dinner; whose son was planning a wedding she couldn’t imagine missing; whose curriculum for this class — History of the Holocaust — had just moments earlier stirred a discussion about hate on campuses.

We love you. These would surely be her final words, Ms. Schamis thought. She knew her plan was futile — irrational, even. But with no stop-the-bleed kit, no shield, no help, words were all she had to show the children that an adult had put up a fight.

The moment never came. The gunman doubled back to the class across the hall, but not to Room 1214. At the command of a SWAT team, Ms. Schamis climbed over bodies and ran with her surviving students down the blood-smeared hallway, out the doors, and into the blinding light.

What waited for her there, in the days and months and years ahead, would be a whole new role in the lives of the 30 students who had survived. For them, she would be what she couldn’t be for the two who died: a lifeline.

She felt she owed them that. She had been the only adult in the room.

Attending to Her Students

The morning after the 2018 massacre at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Fla., Ms. Schamis rose before dawn and began cleaning her bloodstained suede boots. Seventeen people had been killed, including Nick Dworet and Helena Ramsay, who had been in her class. Some of the surviving students had abandoned their blood- and glass-caked shoes on the school pavement, but Ms. Schamis had the strange feeling she ought to take hers home and wipe them down, over and over, until they came clean.

She left the boots out by the closet to dry and then phoned the moving company that was set to relocate her family to a new neighborhood in a few weeks. She no longer had time to pack boxes, she explained to the movers. She needed to attend to her students.

Within a few hours, Ms. Schamis was corresponding with her students by text. Today, she adamantly denies that she started the Room 1214 text thread, but everyone else seems to remember it that way. She used it to organize car pools to wakes and funerals, to check in on the wounded and to plan a meet-up at Cold Stone Creamery, just so everyone could be together.

When the school reopened two weeks later, Ms. Schamis was there, shuffling between campus buildings with a cart of teaching supplies. The school’s psychological support offerings for students included coloring books and Play-Doh. She found them useless. She arranged to instead have a service dog, Luigi, a golden retriever, join her classes for the rest of the year.

When Luigi arrived, tail wagging madly, students from throughout the school came to play with him — including some who had otherwise refused to return to campus. The following fall, Ms. Schamis arranged to have everyone from Room 1214 placed in her study hall for support.

Ms. Schamis had known some of the students for only six weeks before the shooting, but she seemed to have a preternatural sense of what each of them needed. Rebecca Bogart, who had been a senior, felt so lost after what she had witnessed that Ms. Schamis encouraged her to apply for a scholarship to go abroad to Ecuador. The physical distance finally gave her mental space from the event.

Ally Allen, who had watched the killer approach through a glass door panel, kept waking in the night with tears pouring down her face. When Ms. Schamis dropped a picture of a German shepherd puppy in the Room 1214 group chat — a future service dog, in need of a home — Ally felt deep down the dog was meant to be hers. She received Dakota the morning after the one-year anniversary of the shooting: a new beginning.

And Kelly Plaur, who had called 911 four times during the shooting, was at a music festival when the crowd began running from what sounded like gunshots. This time, it was Ms. Schamis she called. Keep calm, the teacher coached. Keep me on the phone, and keep running.

Students called and texted her with their grief, their panic attacks, their drug use, their suicidal thoughts. What their own parents could not fully understand — the worst moment of their lives — Ms. Schamis could.

One day, she took some of the students to meet with a survivor of the 1999 Columbine High School shooting in Colorado. His experience of being shot and watching a friend die was remarkably similar to theirs, and Ms. Schamis hoped that his journey toward healing would assure them that together, they could persevere.

But weeks later, Ms. Schamis’s phone began buzzing incessantly. It was the Room 1214 text thread. The Columbine survivor had died of an overdose.

Leaving Parkland

Ms. Schamis committed herself to staying at Marjory Stoneman Douglas until every surviving student from Room 1214 graduated in the spring of 2019. It was not easy. On her commute each morning, she had the same troubling premonition: her car plummeting off the expressway overpass. Finally, her husband, Jeff, suggested a daily ritual. When she approached the bridge, she was to call him to discuss something grounding and ordinary, like what they would have for dinner.

At the 2019 graduation ceremony, Ms. Schamis wept: Helena should have received a diploma. Ms. Schamis found Helena’s brother and hugged him, but Helena’s mother stood back. Ms. Schamis wondered what the woman felt seeing the teacher who had been with her daughter.

That fall, she took the semester off and then moved to Washington, D.C., forgoing her full pension in search of peace.

Washington was where Ms. Schamis truly began to mourn. She joined a two-year waiting list for therapy. She reached out to Ally Allen, whom she had referred to a breeder for a service dog, realizing for the first time she needed one of her own.

But two Parkland survivor charities she approached for financial aid to train a dog said they could not help her. As a teacher, she wasn’t entirely surprised: She didn’t recall a school administrator ever once checking in on her. She had never heard any school official admit that she had not received active shooter training, or that her classroom had no stop-the-bleed kit. And she had never been able to reclaim mementos of almost 20 years of teaching that remained inside Room 1214.

Ms. Schamis, who has a master’s degree in education and specialized in Holocaust studies, had spent almost her entire career at Marjory Stoneman Douglas. She had loved teaching social studies in part because it allowed her to watch students see themselves anew: As they made sense of current events in the context of history, she witnessed their opinions changing and their prejudices being renounced.

There was nothing more meaningful to her. But she could not return to another classroom.

So she took a job as an office manager at a small private school, accepting a major pay cut to avoid being in a classroom where she would again be responsible for students’ safety.

When she started, she discovered the office manager station was in the front foyer of the building — in a way, the first line of defense.

‘Always Available’

The students, too, scattered around the country, but the Room 1214 text thread bound them together. Over time, there were updates: Ally Allen, inspired by Ms. Schamis, was preparing to become a teacher. Hannah Carbocci was pursing a career in criminal justice and writing her thesis on warning signs in school shooters. Catie Krakow was getting a degree in mental health counseling and shared tips on how the others could care for themselves as another anniversary approached.

I hope everyone is doing as well as they could be, wrote Elena Blanco, who had been assigned to the seat behind Nick.

You guys are forever family, replied Matt Walker, whose desk had been next to Helena’s.

As long as I am breathing, Ms. Schamis told them, I will always be available for you.

A year later, soon after the Uvalde, Texas, shooting, Ms. Schamis woke up to a message on the thread that had landed during the night: Uvalde was one too many, a student wrote; he couldn’t take his anguish anymore.

Ms. Schamis had taken a suicide prevention course the summer after the massacre. She knew the steps. She called the former student, asking if he had a specific plan to end his life. He did. She kept him engaged with questions — what was something he was looking forward to? — while she sought emergency help for him from five states away.

She spent the next five hours in a maze of dead ends. She tried the suicide hotline, but they could not help her, since she was not the person in distress. She did a 40-minute intake call with a Florida behavioral health center, only to learn they did not serve his region. She connected with a mental health hospital, but it turned out to be private. By now, she was weeping.

Eventually she reached the instructor of her suicide prevention class from all those years ago, who told her to call the West Palm Beach Police Department and explain that the distressed young man was a survivor of Parkland’s school shooting.

The boy ultimately received emergency care and survived. But not before the dispatcher who answered Ms. Schamis’s call admitted that with all the school shootings, she could not specifically recall what happened in Parkland.

‘That’s My Girl.’

Four years after the shooting, a process server arrived at Ms. Schamis’s home with a subpoena calling on her to testify at the killer’s sentencing trial. Ms. Schamis hid.

The text thread began to buzz with messages from former students who would also be required to appear. Ms. Schamis reverted to her usual role. I’m with you as you testify, she wrote.

Daniela Menescal, who had gone on to study psychology in Boston and still had shrapnel embedded in her leg and back, was distressed about going alone.

I’ll ask if I can be with you, Ms. Schamis told Daniela.

As the sun rose on a Wednesday morning, she texted the group that it was her turn. Dylan Kraemer, who had already taken the stand, replied fast.

You got this! If you look straight when u testify, he wrote, you can’t see the shooter.

On the witness stand, Ms. Schamis spoke with the tone of a teacher in front of a class, nodding for emphasis and gesturing around the room. Her gold necklace glimmered under the lights as she described the layout of Room 1214, the lesson she had been teaching, the first deafening blasts.

Her eyes trailed over to the defense table. There he was, the man who had stolen Nick’s chance to swim at the Olympics; who had robbed Helena of her plans to attend college in England.

The killer kept his head down. The prosecutor, Mike Satz, brought over a photograph, Exhibit 3S, and asked Ms. Schamis to name the subject.

“That’s my girl,” she said, putting her hand over her mouth, her voice cracking. “Helena. Helena Ramsay.”

Then he brought over another, Exhibit 3R.

“And that’s Nicholas Dworet,” she said. “Handsome boy.”

Parents in the courtroom shifted in their seats. Others shook their heads. Ms. Schamis looked up to the ceiling, blinking the tears from her eyes, patting her cheeks with a tissue and adjusting her glasses back on her nose where they had been.

Hannah Carbocci — watching the trial live from home — knew her teacher wouldn’t see the group chat until later, but she sent an encouraging message anyway: Mrs Schamis you’re a rockstar, she wrote.

There were no further questions, the lawyer in the courtroom said.

Ms. Schamis climbed down from the stand. That afternoon, she typed a response in the thread: Love you so.

A Demolition

As the sixth anniversary of the shooting approached last year, Lexi Gendron was struggling. She had tried to go to college, but like many of the others, found herself too preoccupied with classroom seating arrangements to focus. She couldn’t have her back to the door, but facing it meant watching for a killer.

After one class, she dropped out, instead working at a casino and a winery before moving to Texas. Now, she was about to start nursing school in hopes of a career in pediatrics — which meant returning to a classroom once again.

Just spilling my heart out, she wrote on the thread one night. Lexi had thrown away all her #MSDStrong memorabilia in search of a fresh start in Texas — only to realize that those tangible objects had been her puzzle pieces to a day that had never fully sunk in.

I’m so upset with myself for letting that stuff go, she wrote. I can’t believe I did that.

Ms. Schamis was the first to reply, offering to send T-shirts, bracelets, buttons and pins. Let me know whatever will make you feel better, she wrote.

She understood the pull of Parkland. When the school’s 1200 building was set to be demolished, Ms. Schamis had reached out to the school board, desperate to return to her classroom one more time. The jury, bereaved parents, journalists, and even Vice President Kamala Harris were granted permission to enter the building, but Ms. Schamis was not. Instead, prosecutors sent a package to her home in Washington: a five-year-old box of stale Valentine’s Day chocolates from her desk in Room 1214.

On the morning the demolition was set to begin, Ms. Schamis heard a radio segment as she drove to her new school in Washington. Bereaved families in Parkland were cathartically hammering off bits of the school building before the team came in to clear it away.

Ms. Schamis, shaking, called Jeff. They discussed the weather.

Her last mental image of her own classroom comes from a press pool report in which strangers described the artifacts left inside her fourth-period Holocaust class: a 2017-18 school year planner; a whiteboard bearing Ms. Schamis’s learning objective, “to be aware of the world and its surroundings”; bullet strike marks across the desks; and the dried blood of Nick and Helena coating a book titled “Tell Them We Remember.”

‘The only adult in there.’

Last summer, Ms. Schamis sat on the patio of a Mexican restaurant in Washington, recounting that day in 2018. Her German shepherd, Sayde, sprawled beneath her chair. All these years later, she still seemed uneasy. “That’s what keeps me up at night, thinking I was the only adult in there,” she said.

Jeff sat across from her. He reminded her of the bonds she had forged with her students: the pancake breakfasts at their place; the letters of recommendation for graduate schools; the tattoos that several had gotten — Room 1214 — including one who had it drawn in Ms. Schamis’s handwriting.

“But I didn’t save them — I didn’t save them,” she said. Her words hung in the air, jarring against the faint mariachi music coming through the patio speakers.

Jeff leaned forward and said with a seasoned assurance, “How could anybody save somebody from an AR-15?”

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Science

‘It is scary’: Oak-killing beetle reaches Ventura County, significantly expanding range

Published

1 day ago

January 18, 2026

Press Room

‘It is scary’: Oak-killing beetle reaches Ventura County, significantly expanding range

A tiny beetle responsible for killing hundreds of thousands of oak trees in Southern California has reached Ventura County, marking a troubling expansion.

This is the farthest north the goldspotted oak borer has been found in the state. Given the less-than-one-half-inch insect’s track record of devastating oaks since being first detected in San Diego County in 2008, scientists and land stewards are alarmed — and working to contain the outbreak.

“We keep seeing these oak groves getting infested and declining, and a lot of oak mortality,” said Beatriz Nobua-Behrmann, an ecologist with UC Agriculture and Natural Resources. “And as we go north, we have tons of oak woodlands that are very important ecosystems over there. It can even get into the Sierras if we don’t stop it. So it is scary.”

A goldspotted oak borer emerges from a tree.

(Shane Brown)

Although officials are only now reporting the arrival, they first found the beetle in Ventura County in the summer of 2024. Julie Clark, a community education specialist at the UC program, recalled getting a call from a local forester who spotted an unhealthy-looking coast live oak while driving in the Simi Hills’ Box Canyon.

“He saw dieback. He saw all the leaves on the crown were brown, which is one of the characteristic signs of a GSOB infestation,” Clark said in a blog post published this week, using the acronym for the invasive insect.

The forester examined the tree and found D-shaped holes — the calling card of the goldspotted oak borer — where the beetles had chewed through the tree to emerge from the bark.

Foresters debarked and chipped the highly infested tree to kill the beetles inside. Surrounding trees, however, were not afflicted.

Still, the beetle continued its march in the county. In April, another dead, beetle-infested oak was found in Santa Susana, according to the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection. A month later, several more dead and injured trees were discovered.

The beetle, named for six gold spots that adorn its back, doesn’t fly far. It reaches faraway areas by hitching a ride on firewood. Nobua-Behrmann, an urban forestry and natural resources advisor, is among a contingent calling for regulations limiting the movement of firewood.

The goal, they say, is to prevent the slaughter of the state’s iconic oaks.

The beetles lay their eggs on oaks. When the larvae hatch, they bore in to reach the cambium. The cambium is like a tree’s blood vessels, carrying water and nutrients up and down. The insect chews through the layer, and eventually the damage is akin to putting a permanent tourniquet on the tree.

An infested tree will often display a thinning canopy and red or black stains on the trunk, injured areas where the tree is attempting to force out insects. The “confirming sign” is the roughly eighth-inch exit hole.

In the Golden State, the beetles are attacking the coast live oak, canyon live oak and the California black oak.

The goldspotted oak borer is native to Arizona, where the ecosystem is adapted to it and it doesn’t kill many trees. It’s believed that it traveled to San Diego County via firewood. It has since been found in L.A., Orange, Riverside and San Bernardino counties, and, according to research by UC Riverside, has killed an estimated 200,000 oak trees.

In 2024, the beetle was discovered in several canyons in Santa Clarita, putting it just 14 miles from the roughly 600,000 coast live oaks in the Santa Monica Mountains. Reaching the scenic coastal mountain range was described as “the worst case scenario” for L.A. County in a 2018 report.

Researchers, fire officials and land managers, among others, are working to control or slow the beetles’ death march. They acknowledge they’re unlikely to be eradicated in the areas where they’ve settled in.

Experts advise removing and properly disposing of heavily infested trees, and that entails chipping them. (To kill the minute beetle, chips must be 3 inches in diameter or smaller.)

If trees are lightly or not yet infested, they can be sprayed or injected with insecticides.

However, there are drawbacks to the current options. Pesticides may harm nontarget species, such as butterflies and moths. And the treatment can be expensive and laborious, making it impractical for vast swaths of forest.

There’s another nontoxic tactic in play: educating the public to report possible infestations and burn firewood where they buy it.

People can also volunteer to survey trees for signs of the dreaded beetle, allowing them to “do something instead of just worrying about it,” Nobua-Behrmann said.

UC Agriculture and Natural Resources, along with the Cal Fire, is hosting a “GSOB Blitz” surveying event next month in Simi Valley.

Science

With a nudge from industry, Congress takes aim at California recycling laws

Published

2 days ago

January 17, 2026

Press Room

With a nudge from industry, Congress takes aim at California recycling laws

The plastics industry is not happy with California. And it’s looking to friends in Congress to put the Golden State in its place.

California has not figured out how to reduce single-use plastic. But its efforts to do so have created a headache for the fossil fuel industry and plastic manufacturers. The two businesses are linked since most plastic is derived from oil or natural gas.

In December, a Republican congressman from Texas introduced a bill designed to preempt states — in particular, California — from imposing their own truth-in-labeling or recycling laws. The bill, called the Packaging and Claims Knowledge Act, calls for a national standard for environmental claims on packaging that companies would voluntarily adhere to.

“California’s policies have slowed American commerce long enough,” Rep. Randy Weber (R-Texas) said in a post on the social media platform X announcing the bill. “Not anymore.”

The legislation was written for American consumers, Weber said in a press release. Its purpose is to reduce a patchwork of state recycling and composting laws that only confuse people, he said, and make it hard for them to know which products are recyclable, compostable or destined for the landfill.

But it’s clear that California’s laws — such as Senate Bill 343, which requires that packaging meet certain recycling milestones in order to carry the chasing arrows recycling label — are the ones he and the industry have in mind.

“Packaging and labeling standards in the United States are increasingly influenced by state-level regulations, particularly those adopted in California,” Weber said in a statement. “Because of the size of California’s market, standards set by the state can have national implications for manufacturers, supply chains and consumers, even when companies operate primarily outside of California.”

It’s a departure from Weber’s usual stance on states’ rights, which he has supported in the past on topics such as marriage laws, abortion, border security and voting.

“We need to remember that the 13 Colonies and the 13 states created the federal government,” he said on Fox News in 2024, in an interview about the border. “The federal government did not create the states. … All rights go to the people in the state, the states and the people respectively.”

During the 2023-2024 campaign cycle, the oil and gas industry was Weber’s largest contributor, with more than $130,000 from companies such as Philips 66, the American Chemistry Council, Koch Inc. and Valero, according to OpenSecrets.org.

Weber did not respond to a request for comment. The bill has been referred to the House Energy and Commerce Committee.

Plastic and packaging companies and trade organizations such as Ameripen, Keurig, Dr Pepper, the Biodegradable Plastics Industry and the Plastics Industry Assn. have come out in support of the bill.

Other companies and trade groups that manufacture plastics that are banned in California — such as Dart, which produces polystyrene, and plastic bag manufacturers such as Amcor — support the bill. So do some who could potentially lose their recycling label because they’re not meeting California’s requirements. They include the Carton Council, which represents companies that make milk and other beverage containers.

“Plastic packaging is essential to modern life … yet companies and consumers are currently navigating a complex landscape of rules around recyclable, compostable, and reusable packaging claims,” Matt Seaholm, chief executive of the Plastics Industry Assn., said in a statement. The bill “would establish a clear national framework under the FTC, reducing uncertainty and supporting businesses operating across state lines.”

The law, if enacted, would require the Federal Trade Commission to work with third-party certifiers to determine the recyclability, compostability or reusability of a product or packaging material, and make the designation consistent across the country.

The law applies to all kinds of packaging, not just plastic.

Lauren Zuber, a spokeswoman for Ameripen — a packaging trade association — said in an email that the law doesn’t necessarily target California, but the Golden State has “created problematic labeling requirements” that “threaten to curtail recycling instead of encouraging it by confusing consumers.”

Ameripen helped draft the legislation.

Advocates focused on reducing waste say the bill is a free pass for the plastic industry to continue pushing plastic into the marketplace without considering where it ends up. They say the bill would gut consumer trust and make it harder for people to know whether the products they are dealing with are truly recyclable, compostable or reusable.

“California’s truth-in-advertising laws exist for a simple reason: People should be able to trust what companies tell them,” said Nick Lapis, director of advocacy for Californians Against Waste. “It’s not surprising that manufacturers of unrecyclable plastic want to weaken those rules, but it’s pretty astonishing that some members of Congress think their constituents want to be misled.”

If the bill were adopted, it would “punish the companies that have done the right thing by investing in real solutions.”

“At the end of the day, a product isn’t recyclable if it doesn’t get recycled, and it isn’t compostable if it doesn’t get composted. Deception is never in the public interest,” he said.

On Friday, California’s Atty. Gen. Rob Bonta announced settlements totaling $3.35 million with three major plastic bag producers for violating state law regarding deceptive marketing of non-recyclable bags. The settlement follows a similar one in October with five other plastic bag manufacturers.

Plastic debris and waste is a growing problem in California and across the world. Plastic bags clog streams and injure and kill marine mammals and wildlife. Plastic breaks down into microplastics, which have been found in just about every human tissue sampled, including from the brain, testicles and heart. They’ve also been discovered in air, sludge, dirt, dust and drinking water.

Science

‘Largest outbreak that we’ve seen in California.’ Death cap mushrooms linked to deaths, hospitalizations

Published

2 days ago

January 17, 2026

Press Room

‘Largest outbreak that we’ve seen in California.’ Death cap mushrooms linked to deaths, hospitalizations

An exceptionally wet December has contributed to an abundance of death cap mushrooms, or Amanita phalloides, on the Central Coast and Northern California, causing what officials describe as an unprecedented outbreak of severe illness and death among people who consume the fungi.

Public health officials are issuing a second warning this winter, this time urging the public against foraging for wild mushrooms, noting that many people have mistakenly eaten the death cap that, when consumed, can cause severe liver damage and in some causes death.

In the last 26 years, “we have not had a season as deadly as this season both in terms of the total numbers of cases as well as deaths and liver transplants,” said Craig Smollin, medical director of the San Francisco division of the California Poison Control System.

“I believe this is probably the largest outbreak that we’ve seen in California, ever.”

Many of the cases, officials say, have involved people from Mexico and elsewhere for whom the death cap resembles an edible mushroom in their home countries.

The California Department of Public health reported 35 death cap-related illness, including three fatalities and three liver transplants between Nov. 18 and Jan. 6. Affected people were between the ages of 19 months old and 67 years old.

In a typical year, the California Poison Control Center may receive up to five cases of poisonous mushroom-related illness, according to authorities.

The last major outbreak of mushroom-related illness in California occurred in 2016 with 14 reported cases and while there were no deaths, three people required liver transplants and one child suffered a “permanent neurologic impairment.”

The death cap is the world’s most poisonous mushroom, responsible for 90% of mushroom-related fatalities.

Where the death-cap outbreak is concentrated

When state public health officials first warned of the dangers of the death-cap mushroom in December, significant clusters of reported illness occurred in Monterey and the San Francisco bay areas.

Reported hospitalizations have since grown to include Alameda, Contra Costa, Monterey, San Francisco, San Luis Obispo, San Mateo, Santa Clara, Santa Cruz and Sonoma counties.

Death cap mushrooms are known to sprout across the state of California but they thrive in shady, humid or moist environments under live oak and cultivated cork oak trees.

Death cap mushrooms bloom particularly well after the fall and winter rains. Once they sprout, its tall and graceful characteristics are very conspicuous and catch people’s eye, said David Campbell, an expert on mushroom consumption or a mycophagist.

Who is mistakenly eating the death cap

People who have accidentally consumed the death cap were usually foraging for mushrooms in the wilderness, either alone or with a group, officials say.

Among the affected are monolingual speakers of Spanish, Chinese, Mandarin and Mixteco as well as foragers who may confuse the death cap mushroom for edible fungi from their native countries, according to experts.

“So they have a false sense of security in their knowledge, thinking they know what they’re doing but that only applies to where they’re from,” Campbell said.

“We’re seeing that a number of patients do seem to have a Hispanic background,” said Dr. Rita Nguyen, assistant state public health officer at the California Department of Public Health.

In November, a Salinas family said they went on a hike in their community and found the death cap which looked similar to an edible mushroom they would forage for in their hometown in Oaxaca, KSBW Action News reported.

Laura Marcelino and Carlos Diaz took the mushrooms home, cooked them and ate them — their children did not. They both threw up, had diarrhea for an entire day and were later hospitalized, KSBW Action News reported. Marcelino’s condition improved but Diaz’s health declined exponentially to the point that he fell into a coma and was put on a list to receive a liver transplant, according to news reports.

Why people are mistakenly eating death cap mushrooms

The three most deadly mushrooms in California include the death cap, destroying angel (Amanita ocreata) and deadly Galerina (Galerina marginata), according to the Bay Area Mycological Society.

The death cap mushroom has a dome-shape smooth cap with olive or yellowish-green tones. On the underside of its cap are white gills and spores.

It can be confused with the mushroom species Volvariella, which is edible.

These mushrooms appear similar because they have a volva, a cup-like structure at the base of the mushroom’s stem, and are white-ish, but lack one important key characteristic annulus, or ring, around its stem, said Ari Jumpponen, Kansas State University distinguished professor of biology.

Jumpponen said some Volvariella species can be found in Oaxaca.

What symptoms can you expect after eating a death cap?

No amount of death cap is safe to consume.

“I also want to just stress that there’s nothing, there’s no cooking of the mushroom or freezing of the mushroom that would inactivate the toxin,” Smollin said.

The poisonous toxins from the death cap can result in a delayed gastrointestinal symptoms that may not appear until 6 to 24 hours after eating it.

Some of the early symptoms that can go away within a day include:

Nausea
Vomiting
Diarrhea
Abdominal pain
Drop in blood pressure
Fatigue
Confusion

Mild symptoms may only be the beginning of a more severe reaction.

Severe symptoms can develop within 48 to 96 hours, include progressive liver damage and, in some cases, full liver failure and potentially death, Smollin said.

If you’ve eaten a foraged mushroom and start to exhibit any adverse symptoms, call California’s poison control hotline at 1-800-222-1222 for free, confidential expert advice in multiple languages. If you suspect mushroom poisoning, call 911.