Kay Jean

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.)

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.

Thanks, Ken. Sorry for the delay. We are in the US, in the Midwest.

Thank you for your thoughts and efforts. Ken, sure—if you know of others that might be able to identify them then I’d be interested to hear their thoughts. I was pretty disappointed with the vagueness of the lab results. But I also have heard IDing by photo is hard so that’s why I thought sending them in might help.

Thanks again!

I did find about 40 of the mushrooms in various parts of our yard. A lot of them had started to get brown, a bit slimy-like, and looking like they were dying(?). We pulled the ones we found and threw them away but did not have a chance to check the whole yard. A few were still “younger” looking but the majority looked like they were dying...

Here are some photos! We no longer have these samples because we sent them in so I can't try the bruising or cutting it open part, unfortunately. I'm going to check our property for any others later today, but it seems like the ones are no longer in the main place they had been before. How quickly do mushrooms decompose??  It'd still be helpful for me to know the species in case they come back though.
Thanks again!

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

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

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!

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!