August Karl Joseph Corda

August Karl Joseph Corda (1809 - 1849)

Image of August Karl Joseph Corda from Curtis Gates Lloyd (1898 - 1925) Mycological Notes

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Biography
Sources
Selected publications
Species
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Biography

1809 born in Reichenburg, Bohemia

1835 appointed director of the Bohemian National Museum, in Prague (later the Prague National Museum)

1848 embarks on a collecting expedition to the wild Texas coast

1849 dies when his ship goes down in the Gulf of Mexico

Dörfelt & Heklau say that it was through the assistance of Krombholz that the destitute Corda was allowed to study medicine (presumably at the University of Prague, where Krombholz was on the faculty). I haven't been able to find out when that was, or any other events in his life before he becomes director of the national museum.
Corda's books are important for the study of early mycology. His Icones has lovely drawings of many fleshy fungi; it also includes drawings of setae, and the giant cystidia of Coprinus micaceus, but his microscope doesn't seem to have had the resolution to get smaller features accurately. According to Ramsbottom (1953) , Corda claimed that he gave a talk in 1832 presenting basidia to the Royal Prussian Academy of Sciences, but they would not accept his work. He published some of the drawings from that talk in Corda (1839) . Also, according to Lloyd,

Corda, as a matter of fact, was the next man to work with hypogaeal fungi after Vittadini, and he named and figured (crudely) several of them. He sent them to Berkeley and Berkeley sent them to Tulasne, and between the two they managed to get rid of most of Corda's names.
Lloyd March 1925, p. 74

The result of his Texas trip makes him one of the few mycologists to die while collecting fungi. Lloyd notes: "It was supposed his [Texas] collections were lost also, but there are in the museum at Berlin... a few fungi collected in Texas not marked from Corda, as I remember, but surely from him." It is not clear how the fungi got to Berlin; he must have sent some collections overland, before his ship went down.
Lloyd says that the drawing of Corda was (in 1922) in the possession of Mattirolo, who told Lloyd its provenance, but Lloyd forgot it.
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Sources

Curtis Gates Lloyd (1898 - 1925) Mycological Notes

Heinrich Dörfelt & Heike Heklau (1998) Die Geschichte der Mykologie
(Die Geschichte der Mykologie)

John Ramsbottom (1953) Mushrooms and Toadstools

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Selected Publications

August Karl Joseph Corda (1837 - 1854) Icones Fungorum hucusque cognitorum (Pictures of Fungi as Currently Understood) 6 vol.

August Karl Joseph Corda (1837) Deutschlands Flora: the section on fungi and liverworts (Germany's plants)

I have contradictory information on this work, with one source attributing it to J. Sturm, who I believe is the anthologist.

August Karl Joseph Corda (1839) Pracht-flora europäischer Schimmelbildungen (Splendid Plants: Pictures of European Molds)

August Karl Joseph Corda (1842) Anleitung zum Studium der Mycologie (Introduction to the Study of Mycology)

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Species

Leucocoprinus birnbaumii (Corda) Singer
Leucocoprinus luteus (Corda) Singer
Myriostoma coliforme (Persoon) Corda
Ustilago maydis (De Candolle) Corda

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Genera

Melanospora Corda
Peronospora Corda
Rhizopus C. G. Ehrenberg: Corda
Rhopalomyces Corda

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