Vol 25, no 3, October - The Linnean Society of London

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THE LINNEAN 2009 VOLUME 25(3)
vegetation, a view encouraged by Henslow in a letter to Darwin written on 15 January
1833 “…The Lichens are good things as scarcely any one troubles himself to send
them home…” (Burkhardt & Smith 1985: 294; Porter 1987: 149). Darwin’s lichens
were sent by Henslow to the mycologist M.J. Berkeley, Darwin noting in a letter to
Joseph Hooker on 11 January 1844 “…My cryptogamic collection was sent to Berkeley;
it was not large; I do not believe he has yet published an account but he wrote to me
some year ago that he had described & mislaid all his descriptions. W d it not be well
for you to put yourself in communication with him; as otherwise some things will
perhaps be twice laboured over. – My best (though poor) collection of the Cryptogam.
was from the Chonos Islands…” (Burkhardt & Smith 1987: 2).
On 29 January 1844 Hooker wrote to Darwin “…M r Berkeley was with us shortly
before your letter arrived, & I gave him all my Fungi, he has returned me for M r
Henslow your Lichens, which he had; but said nothing about the other orders in his
possession…”(Burkhardt & Smith 1987: 6). Thus, Darwin’s lichens went to Kew
where Hooker made extensive use of them during the preparation of his Flora
Antarctica, the first part of his Botany of the Antarctic Voyage. Hooker enlisted the
help of the Irish lichenologist, Thomas Taylor for determination of his lichen collections
from the southern zone (Hooker & Taylor 1844), and Taylor later described several
new species from Darwin’s Beagle collections (Taylor 1847 – see below).
Taylor’s lichens, which include duplicates of some Darwin collections, are held in
the Farlow Herbarium of Harvard University (FH), but the bulk of Darwin’s lichens
are to be found scattered through the General Collection, and in the unincorporated
collections of the Lichen Section of the Natural History Museum in London (BM). An
additional, and as yet untapped, source of Darwin lichens is also in the Natural History
Museum. On Darwin’s rock specimens held in the basement corridor drawers of the
Department of Mineralogy, many of them from remote places never visited (or likely
to visited) by a lichenologist, there are sometimes mosaics of lichens present. These
Darwin specimens would richly repay a lichenologist’s attention. Notes on the various
Darwin lichen collections that I was able to find in the BM between 1973 and 1994,
supplemented with relevant accounts from the literature are given below.
1. Fernando de Noronha: On 19 February 1832, the Beagle was off Fernando de
Noronha, Darwin noting in his Diary “... An hour before sunset Fernando was clearly
visible – it appears an extraordinary place, – there is one lofty mountain that at a
distance looks as if it were overhanging…”. The next day Darwin spent a few hours
on the island, commenting his Diary “…I spent a most delightful day in wandering
about the woods. – The whole island is one forest, & is so thickly intertwined that it
requires great exertion to crawl along….I am glad that I have seen these islands, I
shall enjoy the greater wonders [of the tropical rainforest] all the more from having a
guess what to look for…” (Keynes 1988: 39). And in his Journal he noted “…The
whole island is covered with wood; but from the dryness of the climate there is no
appearance of luxuriance…” (Darwin 1845). From the highest peak he collected the
basidiolichen Dictyonema glabratum (Berkeley 1842: 445 – recorded as Cora pavonia
– see also Porter 1987: 158).
2. Brazil: on 5 April 1832 the Beagle landed at Rio de Janeiro and stayed there
until 5 July. Darwin’s Brazilian lichen collections [the specimens seen in BM have a