Foraging for Clues

We have been down a vertitable rabbit hole this week—not in honour of a certain forthcoming bunny festival, but because we have entered the chaotic subterranean world of mycology... Cataloging an enchanting collection of 19th-century field sketches, I have attempted to learn the difference between a Boletus and an Agaricus, a Peziza and a Clavaria; after many hours, feeling disheartened by the notion that 'they all look the same', it became apparent that my taxonomic confusion was a symptom of the very displine itself—fraught with synonyms and reassignations over the decades that were making definitive identification of these 19th-century specimens especially elusive.

Mycology has always been a science on the margins. Through the middle ages and into the 18th century, people thought mushrooms came up where lightning struck, and that you could tell which one was going to kill you by boiling it with a wooden spoon. In the 19th century it developed a strong amateur tradition, with expertise in the field often more likely to be found in the general public than in the universities and research institutions—our artist seemingly one such expert amateur (although I was struck by their similarity to sketches by John Stevens Henslow (1796–1861), Professor of Botany at the University of Cambridge—see image 4). Even today, it is estimated that only 6-8% of the world’s fungi have so far been identified. As for me, I think I'll be avoiding mushrooms for a while!