A Short Description of the Collections of The
New
York Botanical Garden Herbarium (NY): Fungi
The
fungus herbarium, the second largest in the Western Hemisphere,
comprises
approximately 600,000 specimens. The foundation for this collection was
laid when the Garden purchased the herbarium of Job
Bicknell Ellis, a
pioneer
in North American mycology, who built his collection of more than
100,000
specimens over the course of 40 years. He not only collected
extensively
but also received material from all parts of the country and from many
parts of Europe. All groups of fungi are represented in the Ellis
herbarium,
with the greatest emphasis placed on plant pathogens and micro-fungi in
general. The collection includes the types of 4000 new specimens
described
by Ellis and collaborators.
The
geographical strength of the mycological herbarium lies in collections
from the Americas, both historical and contemporary. Staff members Fred
J. Seaver and Clark
T.
Rogerson concentrated
on North America. Rogerson conducted intensive studies on the fungi of
Utah for more than 30 years. Two recently acquired herbaria have
greatly expanded the depth of North American holdings: the Carnegie Museum (CM) fungus
herbarium is noteworthy for its extensive representation of the fungi
of Pennsylvania and adjoining states, and the University of Massachusetts (MASS)
fungus herbarium brought probably the most complete set of New England
fungi to the Garden.
The
preeminent representation
of the Garden's Herbarium of the mycota of Latin America was
established
through the efforts of staff members. Franklin
Sumner Earle, the
Gardens
first mycologist, collected primarily plant pathogens in Cuba and
Puerto
Rico as well as in the southeastern United States. William
A. Murrill collected more than 70,000 specimens of polypores
and
agarics from the United States, Europe, Mexico, South America, and the
West Indies. Kent
P. Dumont carried out a
very
active collecting program in tropical America. He made more than 25,000
collections in Bolivia, Brazil, Colombia, Ecuador, Panama, and
Venezuela. Gary
J. Samuels (staff member, 1966-1973, 1984-1989) deposited
thousands
of his collections (primarily ascomycetes) from Brazil, Colombia,
French
Guiana, Guyana, New Zealand, Panama, and Venezuela. Roy
Halling
(staff member, 1983-present) has contributed specimens primarily
of Agaricales from his research programs in Argentina, Bolivia, Chile,
Colombia, Costa Rica, Ecuador, and Venezuela, as well as from his
earlier
studies in North America (primarily California and New England).
Certain
groups of fungi are particularly well represented in the Garden's
mycological herbarium. The combination of the myxomycete collections of
Ellis, Robert
Hagelstein, and William
Codman Sturgis make the Garden's
collection probably the largest in North America and one of the most
important
collections of myxomycetes in the world. The strong foundation in
pyrenomycetes,
established through the acquisition of the Ellis herbarium, has been
supplemented
through the research of staff members Rogerson and Samuels
(Hypocreales)
and the herbarium of Margaret E. Barr (from the University of
Massachusetts).
The discomycete collection is significant because it contains vouchers
from the works on North American discomycetes by Seaver, worldwide
studies
by George E.
Massee
(whose herbarium was
acquired in 1905 and 1910), and studies on the Sclerotiniaceae by
Dumont.
Especially significant collections in the basidiomycete herbarium
include
Hydnaceae (Lucien
M. Underwood and Howard James Banker), boletes
and polypores (Murrill), the agaric families Tricholomataceae (Howard
E.
Bigelow and Halling) and Russulaceae (Gertrude
S. Burlingham), and gasteromycetes, especially hypogeous taxa (Sanford
Myron Zeller).
Based
on an article by Patricia K. Holmgren, Jacquelyn A. Kallunki &
Barbara M. Thiers in Brittonia,
vol. 48(3):
287-288, ©1996
B&W photograph courtesy of The New York Botanical Garden
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