THE FUNGI OF THE WILKES EXPEDITION 



William W. Diehl 



The U. S. Exploring Expedition under the command of Charles 

 Wilkes, 1838-42, in connection with other work of a scientific 

 character made collections of plants which have been a notable 

 contribution to a floristic knowledge of the lands explored. The 

 fungi collected on this expedition (1) were, however, singularly 

 few, thirty-one in all, eight of which were described as new (2). 



In spite of the character of this limited collection and the status 

 of Berkeley and Curtis as eminent mycologists of the period, the 

 eight new species do not seem to have been generally recognized 

 in the literature. Massee (3) in his monograph does not men- 

 tion Nos. 21 and 23. Cooke (4) in his "Australian Fungi" 

 makes no mention of these Berkeley and Curtis species. Hen- 

 nings (5) in a compendium of South Sea fungi calls attention to 

 but one of the list, No. 21, as Thelephora lamellata B. Guppy 

 (6) listing the fungi of the Solomon Islands similarly cites this 

 species only. Berkeley (7) himself cites only this one of the 

 Wilkes Expedition names in his " Fungi of the Challenger Ex- 

 pedition." None of them occurs in Berkeley's (8) part of the 

 Flora of New Zealand. It is indeed strange that Berkeley and 

 others, except by citation of the Wilkes literature, do not seem 

 to refer in subsequent publications to any other collections of 

 these species either directly or in synonymy. 



This lack of reference to these fungi is doubtless due to the 

 fact that the types have been lost to mycologists in that they have 

 probably not been recognized since their original description. 

 The species were published (2) as new less than six months 

 after Curtis studied them, if his study was coincident with his 

 reference in a letter to Professor Edw. Tuckerman dated Dec. 

 9, 1850. 1 He notes finding some lichens among the fungi of the 



1 Dr. C. L. Shear has kindly permitted the writer to examine a photostat 

 copy of the letters written to Tuckerman from 1847 to 1850. 



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