{"id":1333,"date":"2014-04-07T16:58:33","date_gmt":"2014-04-07T20:58:33","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.nybg.org\/science-talk\/?p=1333"},"modified":"2014-04-08T09:23:55","modified_gmt":"2014-04-08T13:23:55","slug":"a-unique-and-lovely-little-fungal-collection","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.nybg.org\/blogs\/science-talk\/2014\/04\/a-unique-and-lovely-little-fungal-collection\/","title":{"rendered":"A Unique and Lovely Little Fungal Collection"},"content":{"rendered":"

Ellen Diane Bloch is the Collections Manager of the Cryptogamic Herbarium, part of the William and Lynda Steere Herbarium<\/a>. The Cryptogamic Herbarium includes the fungi collection.<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n

\n
\"Eaton's<\/a>
The fungal collection of Elizabeth Eaton Morse<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

One of my favorite discoveries in the 30 years that I have worked in the William and Lynda Steere\u00a0Herbarium\u00a0is\u00a0an odd and beautiful collection of fungi. Packed away in a charming box from Hink’s Department Store in Berkeley, California,\u00a0is an assortment of nearly 40 specimens\u00a0collected in Mount Desert Island, Maine, in 1935. How did these dried fungal specimens from\u00a0Maine come to be placed in a box from a\u00a0California retailer\u00a0and then end up at The New York Botanical Garden<\/a>?<\/p>\n

To answer that question, it helps to know that\u00a0the fungi were collected by\u00a0Elizabeth Eaton Morse, who devoted much of her\u00a0life to collecting and studying fungi.\u00a0Born in Framingham, Massachusetts, in 1864, Morse\u00a0taught elementary school for several years before entering Wellesley College, where\u00a0she graduated with a diploma from the School of Art in 1891. After decades of teaching and supervising in Massachusetts and New York City schools,\u00a0Morse returned to Wellesley College,\u00a0receiving\u00a0a B.A. with a major in botany in 1926.
\n
\n\"Eaton\"<\/a>That summer, while on vacation, she presented herself at the office of Dr. Lee Bonar at\u00a0the University of California, Berkeley. She explained that she wanted to\u00a0study cryptogamic botany, a diverse group of species\u00a0comprising\u00a0algae, fungi, lichens, and bryophytes (mosses and related plants). By the end of that summer,\u00a0Morse decided to retire from teaching, devote herself to the study of fungi, and move to Berkeley. Although registered as a part-time graduate student at Berkeley, where she was given working space in the attic of the Botany Building, she was not a candidate for a higher degree. However, as a guest of the Department of Botany, she was provided with storage and work space for more than twenty years.<\/p>\n

She regularly spent her summers on collecting trips, including a trip to Maine in 1935. In her later years, she\u00a0distributed much of her\u00a0extensive\u00a0collections, starting with the\u00a0herbarium at Berkeley but also including\u00a0smaller sets that\u00a0went to a number of institutions, including, in 1948,\u00a0the\u00a0Botanical Garden.<\/p>\n

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Inside the\u00a0box from the long-gone Berkeley department store is a folder addressed to Dr. F. J. Seaver<\/a>, the Garden’s\u00a0fungi specialist at the time, with collection notes and a cover letter. “Tho’ rather common species, they show what Maine coastal climate may do in reducing size<\/em>,” she wrote. “I carried these specimens in my suit-case for several weeks, for safety’s sake! I hope they may last many years.”<\/p>\n

You can read more about Elizabeth Eaton Morse here<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n

\n

Photo of Elizabeth Eaton Morse courtesy of the UNC Herbarium<\/a>, as found in <\/em>Mycologia Vol. 48 No. 3, 3 May \u2013 June 1956, pg. 439<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Packed away in a Hink’s Department Store box from California sits a colorful collection of fungi assembled by an indefatigable teacher and botanist.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":16,"featured_media":1335,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"spay_email":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false},"categories":[3],"tags":[323,326,322,325,33,324,167],"yoast_head":"\nA Unique and Lovely Little Fungal Collection - Science Talk Archive<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.nybg.org\/blogs\/science-talk\/2014\/04\/a-unique-and-lovely-little-fungal-collection\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"A Unique and Lovely Little Fungal Collection - 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