Identifying Mushrooms

'Guv Bob[_2_ Wrote: > ;975497']Howdy folks, can someone identify these front yard mushrooms > and give me some pointers on how to tell if they are edible or not? > Location is So Calif.
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They look rather old, dried up and shrivelled, which makes identification difficult. For example, gill colour is an important feature for identification, and in the pictures the gills are presenting brown. But I suspect the brown colour may be just because the mushrooms are rather old and shrivelled, rather than being their true colour.
Mushrooms with brown gills and a ring are usually Agaricus, ie, the group containing the cultivated mushroom. Most Agaricus are edible - if you are going to eat wild-collected Agaricus you need to learn about the few that aren't. You also need to be absolutely sure it isn't one of the deadly poisonous mushrooms that can be mistaken for Agaricus. One doesn't eat this kind of mushroom without being absolutely sure what they are. A key feature of identifying Agaricus is that that the ring is loose, it isn't attached to the stem. And that doesn't appear to be the case here. So I'm suspecting that this is not actually Agaricus.
Other features of the mushroom, apart from gill colour, suggest Lepiota/Macrolepiota (only recently divided into two), which includes (in Macrolepiota) the delicious and easily identified parasol mushrooms. Lepiota also includes poisonous mushrooms, so is not a group to wander outside the easily identified parasols. Well I eat parasols because they are obvious to me; others who are less sure should beware. (Macro)Lepiota should have white gills, so that feature looks wrong, but I'm wondering whether they might age brown. Old (Macro)lepiota are often riddled with grubs, so that's a reason not to eat the old ones.
The other group that Agaricus is too frequently mistaken for is Amanita, a group containing some especially deadly funguses, as well as a few of good edible ones. Amanita usually (but not all) has white gills, but gain I'm wondering how they age. One has to be very sure about this as mistakes can be fatal. My relatives eat Amanita rubescens in very large quantities, because they are used to it that they can reliably distinguish it from deadly poisonous Amanita pantherina. I'm less sure, so I won't eat it when they aren't there to check for me.
In sum, it is probably a waste of time trying to identify these as they are already long past prime eating condition. And this mushroom is bang in the middle of an area of identification where mistakes can be fatal, which would be another reason for me not to eat it at all unless you were completely sure exactly what it is. I would say you shouldn't even consider eating this unless you are already completely sure what it is, because you eat it frequently.