Lepiota/lepiotoid mushrooms

Hi,

I posted a different question last week that is somewhat related to this, but now I have more information and so I am creating a new post because I have more information and others may now be able to weigh in more.

I was wondering if anyone had more information or details about the lepiota mushroom and any reputable websites that could give me more info.  We found some mushrooms in our yard and I had them sent to a diagnostic identification lab and this is the information I received:
"The specimen received is most likely the mushroom on the genus Lepiota spp or  
the lepiotoid group, see http://www.mushroomexpert.com/lepiotoid.html
Lepiotoid mushrooms are hard to identify to species as their group taxonomy  
remains convoluted and in flux."

Given that they are not identifying the specific species, I'm trying to learn more about the various kinds of lepiotoid/lepiota mushrooms there are.  Specifically, I just want to understand their level of toxicity (i.e., some nausea vs. deadly) and does it vary if it were a some flecks of mushroom vs. a whole mushroom. We do not plan to eat any of them, but I am mostly wondering how concerned I need to be if my toddler were somehow able to accidentally ingest one. (We are vigilant about supervising him, but toddlers test boundaries and I would prefer to know how much we need to avoid the areas of our yard with these mushrooms if they are lethal so he does not test that particular boundary if they could have deadly consequences.)  In addition, if there are things we should do to try to get rid of these types of mushrooms, that could also be helpful to learn.

Thank you so much for any of your thoughts and ideas!  

Pictures would be very helpful. We might at least be able to tell you what it could be or eliminate some kinds of Lepiotas.

Hi! Thanks for responding. Here are some photos. Any thoughts would be great.
Also, I plan to check our whole property tomorrow more thoroughly but the area that had the most mushrooms now does not seem to have them anymore. It’s been a few weeks, so do they die and decompose that quickly? I thought I’d at least see remenants of them (but the grass is long so maybe I just missed it). Do they break down and disappear that quickly? Or perhaps some wildlife ate them?
Thanks again!

Oops. Files aren’t seeming to be working right. I will try again to submit pictures tomorrow.

I have sometimes have these in my yard. http://www.mushroomfarm.com/mushroom-species/lepiota/leucocoprinus-cepistipes.html .

They make some people very sick. I was afraid they were Aminitas so learned to ID them. At least the ones I have aren't quit that bad.

Here are the pics! Ken (or anyone else), thoughts on the specific species?
Thank you again!!

Mushrooms that have blades underneath could be dangerous, use caution. Check online for I.D. help. I have been foraging wild mushrooms u\on Long Island, N.Y. for many years, and. even within a species, there is a lot of variation.

Blades? I haven't heard that terminology....same as gills?

I strongly recommend you read this before going further with this family of mushrooms.  Mushroomexpert

Recent developments have reclassified many of the previously identified mushrooms, this is because of DNA testing and other markers being identified.
All this has created a new set if classifications.

there are also green gilled, white gilled and red varieties, some of which are edible but many are labeled as poisonous.

Redhawk

RedHawk,

I wasn’t quite sure from your post—Were you questioning the accuracy of them being lepiota/lepiotoid? The diagnostic lab actually sent me the same link to that article but it didn’t help clarify much without knowing the species.

Thanks for your thoughts.

No, I was not questioning their results, just bringing up how daunting it can be to arrive at a reliable ID in the field.

Spore prints are very helpful but as our technology gets better and better, we scientist can end up adding confusion, especially when we use DNA testing that ends up showing a previously thought mushroom to be from a totally different genus than the accepted knowledge says it is in.

We have many edibles on our farm but we don't eat them simply because there are poisonous species that look like the edibles.
This has created the situation of us growing, from known cultures, those species we like to eat.
With many mushrooms you only get one chance to get it wrong.

I choose to know my food precisely since I'm not ready for the dirt nap as yet.

So, just for my own understanding, is there any possible way to identify a particular species with good accuracy? If a mushroom expert looked at them growing in person is that more or less accurate than a lab? I assumed when I sent it to the diagnostic lab that we would get back a pretty clear answer since that felt the most scientific. Or perhaps this is just one of those things that can’t be pinned down so easily? (And I agree, I definitely would not risk trying something that could be lethal. I’m mostly just trying to figure out how worried I need to be about the possibility of these being lethal and growing in our yard where we play, and worries about them or bits of them getting tracked into the house by accident, etc.)

a good mycologist (mushroom expert) is just as reliable as a laboratory in my humble opinion.

We are trying to get educated to the point of being able to correctly identify the mushrooms growing on our land.
Sadly, there aren't many shroomers in our area and the one group of mycology enthusiast only meet once a month for the middle three months of the year.

There are quite a few books now that really help in identification available both on line and in book stores.

This isn't something to fear, just take the time to gain the knowledge so you can identify what you are looking at.
People have been gathering wild mushrooms for eons and that means that some where along the way they learned to tell the good ones from the bad ones.