Lloyd Mycological Writings V4.pdf - MykoWeb

SYNONYMS, MISTAKES, SPECIES IMPERFECTLY KNOWN
OR NOT KNOWN AT ALL, ETC.
"The shape, size and color of one and the same species of fungus
are subject to considerable variation, a fact which has misled many
mycologists and caused them to describe already known species as
new. Accordingly, many superfluous names of fungi must be eliminated
after establishing their identity. Hence our science, suffer-
ing surfeit with bad species introduced by error, ignorance or vanity,
requires thorough purification."
"Faith in Science is liable to be shaken when it becomes evident
how many species already known in scientific works have been described
under new names as new species and how many wrongly
determined are contained in exsiccatae and museums."
"If nature had spent its millions of years in experimenting, it
probably could not have produced as many different species of fungi
as have been scribbled together by mankind in one century. In the
22 volumes of Saccardo's Sylloge Fungorum, 73,516 species are
named; certainly 1,500 have been named since and thus about 75
thousand species have been published. It is probable that upon
thorough revision, many can be eliminated, although it can not be
denied that there are also some new good species, not heretofore described."
Hollos.
Of the 75 thousand alleged species that exist I doubt if any individual
knows or has known two thousand that are good, and yet
there have been several who do not hesitate to discover "new species"
from Abrothallus to Zythia. It is the easiest way to pose. When
Saccardo covered the field in 1889, 31,927 alleged species were named.
In the twenty-five years that has since elapsed, 43,000 additional
have been proposed, 42,999 known only to the author, and the mill
grinds merrily on.
If the so-called "scientific world" had exerted its utmost ingenuity
it could not have evolved a more indefinite, inaccurate or
impractical method of naming its objects than has been practiced in
mycology. The species of the world are largely the same, there are
relatively few of them and they are widely distributed. Mycenastrum
Corium, Calvatia lilacina, Polyporus gilvus and many other common
species grow in probably every country, and practically every specimen
of either of these that has drifted into Europe in the past has
been given a new name. There is no way of finding out what they
are except to hunt them up where they are preserved, for the description
in not one case in a hundred is of any practical use in determining
the species. Most of the names that obscure the subject
are either based on the scanty knowledge of the "old species" of the
party naming them, or on imperfect material that never should have
been named. On the following pages we give our opinion of a number
of "species" we have seen in the various museums.
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