Curtis Gates Lloyd     (1859 - 1926)




Photo of Calvatia gigantea by John Denk
Calvatia gigantea

Back to Author Index

Biography
Sources
Selected publications
Species
Genera

Biography

1859     July 17, born at Florence, Kentucky

private schooling in Florence and Crittendon, Kentucky

1879     apprenticeship to a pharmacist in Cincinnati, where he lives for the rest of his life

1880     bookkeeper for a publishing house

1886     becomes a partner with his brothers, John Uri Lloyd and Nelson Ashly Lloyd, in a wholesale drug firm

builds up a tremendous herbarium, partly on his own, partly through correspondence

sells share in the firm to his brothers, devotes himself totally to botany, especially mycology. Publishes Mycological Notes, a periodical devoted mainly to his own discoveries

1926     November 11, dies in Cincinnati
I have also seen his year of death listed as 1927

Lloyd was a quirky individual, even by the exacting standards of the world of mycology. Being independently wealthy and publishing his opinions in his own journal meant that he could sound off on whatever he wanted to, without fear of any consequences (except perhaps social ones). As a consequence, his writings are sometimes very entertaining. He even created a fictitious Professor McGinty to express especially cranky or contrarian views in his magazine.


Image of Pseudocolus fusiformis from Christian Gottfried Daniel Nees von Esenbeck (1816 - 1817) Das System der Pilze und Schwämme
Pseudocolus fusiformisGiven his professional immunity from criticism, he was amazingly conscientious and substantive in his mycological investigations, and his writings are in no way vanity publications. He used his pile of money to travel around Europe and the US, visiting herbaria and studying their type collections. He monographed several genera (in Mycological Notes) based on these studies, specializing in the non-gilled fungi (which had fewer (annoying) people working on them).

He had a mania for synonymizing, and was permanently angry with mycologists that declared new species based on a few specimens. And this had been a common practice since the early 19th century, as various European expeditions went out collecting things from all sorts of exotic locations and brought them back to Europe (and people like Berkeley and Hennings) to be named. Much of the time, Lloyd's criticisms were correct, as far as species were concerned: there were lots of species declared from a handful of shrivelled specimens from thousands of miles away, and then a new species declared on each new shrivelled handful. But he also extended his lumping views to genera, with absolutely disastrous results. He explicitly felt that genera were and should be artificial (I seem to remember him saying at one point that genera were just baskets to hold species), and that only the most extreme circumstances justified the creation of a new one. The idea of having a taxonomic system based on biological relatedness, or even on the greater convenience of having several moderate-sized genera replace one huge one, never seems to have occurred to him.

With his easy access to specimens and publication, he also published several new species of his own, and most of them have held up.
Back to top

Sources

Harry Baker Humphrey (1961) Makers of North American Botany


Back to top

Further Info

The Lloyd Library: Curtis Gates Lloyd

Back to top

Selected Publications

Curtis Gates Lloyd (1898 - 1925) Mycological Notes

Curtis Gates Lloyd (1902) "The genera of the Gasteromycetes" in Mycological Notes (Lloyd calls some volumes of this "Mycological Writings". I've stuck with "Mycological Notes" throughout.) January 1

Curtis Gates Lloyd (1902) "The Geasters" in Mycological Notes (Lloyd calls some volumes of this "Mycological Writings". I've stuck with "Mycological Notes" throughout.) 1

Curtis Gates Lloyd (1905) "The genus Bovistella" in Mycological Notes (Lloyd calls some volumes of this "Mycological Writings". I've stuck with "Mycological Notes" throughout.) 2:23 pp. 277 - 287

Curtis Gates Lloyd (1905) "The genus Mitremyces" in Mycological Notes (Lloyd calls some volumes of this "Mycological Writings". I've stuck with "Mycological Notes" throughout.) 2:30 pp. 238 - 243
Mitremyces is a genus of Nees von Esenbeck. Eduard Fischer synonymized it with Calostoma N. A. Desvaux

Curtis Gates Lloyd (1905) "The Lycoperdons of the United States" in Mycological Notes (Lloyd calls some volumes of this "Mycological Writings". I've stuck with "Mycological Notes" throughout.) 20 pp. 221 - 238

Curtis Gates Lloyd (1906) "The Tylostomeae" in Mycological Notes (Lloyd calls some volumes of this "Mycological Writings". I've stuck with "Mycological Notes" throughout.) 2

Curtis Gates Lloyd (1906) "The Nidulariaceae" in Mycological Notes (Lloyd calls some volumes of this "Mycological Writings". I've stuck with "Mycological Notes" throughout.) 2

Curtis Gates Lloyd (1909) "Synopsis of the known Phalloids" in Mycological Notes (Lloyd calls some volumes of this "Mycological Writings". I've stuck with "Mycological Notes" throughout.) 3

Curtis Gates Lloyd (1910) "Synopsis of the sections Microporus, Tabacinus and Funales of the genus Polystictus" in Mycological Notes (Lloyd calls some volumes of this "Mycological Writings". I've stuck with "Mycological Notes" throughout.) 3 pp. 49 - 70

Curtis Gates Lloyd (1910) "Synopsis of the genus Hexagona" in Mycological Notes (Lloyd calls some volumes of this "Mycological Writings". I've stuck with "Mycological Notes" throughout.) 3 pp. 1 - 46

Curtis Gates Lloyd (1911) "Synopsis of the section Ovinus of the genus Polyporus" in Mycological Notes (Lloyd calls some volumes of this "Mycological Writings". I've stuck with "Mycological Notes" throughout.) 3 pp. 73 - 94

Curtis Gates Lloyd (1912) "Synopsis of the stipitate Polyporoids" in Mycological Notes (Lloyd calls some volumes of this "Mycological Writings". I've stuck with "Mycological Notes" throughout.) 3 pp. 95 - 208

Curtis Gates Lloyd (1913) "Synopsis of the genus Cladoderris" in Mycological Notes (Lloyd calls some volumes of this "Mycological Writings". I've stuck with "Mycological Notes" throughout.) 4

Curtis Gates Lloyd (1913) "Synopsis of the stipitate Stereums" in Mycological Notes (Lloyd calls some volumes of this "Mycological Writings". I've stuck with "Mycological Notes" throughout.) 4

Curtis Gates Lloyd (1915) "Synopsis of the genus Fomes" in Mycological Notes (Lloyd calls some volumes of this "Mycological Writings". I've stuck with "Mycological Notes" throughout.) 4 pp. 211 - 288

Curtis Gates Lloyd (1915) "Synopsis of the Cordyceps of Australasia" in Mycological Notes (Lloyd calls some volumes of this "Mycological Writings". I've stuck with "Mycological Notes" throughout.) 4

Curtis Gates Lloyd (1915) "Synopsis of the section Apus of the genus Polyporus" in Mycological Notes (Lloyd calls some volumes of this "Mycological Writings". I've stuck with "Mycological Notes" throughout.) 4 pp. 291 - 392

Curtis Gates Lloyd (1916) "The Geoglossaceae" in Mycological Notes (Lloyd calls some volumes of this "Mycological Writings". I've stuck with "Mycological Notes" throughout.) 5

Curtis Gates Lloyd (1917) "The genus Radulum" in Mycological Notes (Lloyd calls some volumes of this "Mycological Writings". I've stuck with "Mycological Notes" throughout.) 4

Curtis Gates Lloyd (1918) "Xylaria notes: No. 2" in Mycological Notes (Lloyd calls some volumes of this "Mycological Writings". I've stuck with "Mycological Notes" throughout.) 5

Curtis Gates Lloyd (1918) "Xylaria notes: No. 1" in Mycological Notes (Lloyd calls some volumes of this "Mycological Writings". I've stuck with "Mycological Notes" throughout.) 5

Curtis Gates Lloyd (1919) "Synopsis of some genera of the larger Pyrenomycetes: Camillea, Thamnomyces, Engleromyces" in Mycological Notes (Lloyd calls some volumes of this "Mycological Writings". I've stuck with "Mycological Notes" throughout.) 5

Curtis Gates Lloyd (1919) "The larger Pyrenomycetes. Second paper" in Mycological Notes (Lloyd calls some volumes of this "Mycological Writings". I've stuck with "Mycological Notes" throughout.) 5

Curtis Gates Lloyd (1922) "The tessellate Favoli" in Mycological Notes (Lloyd calls some volumes of this "Mycological Writings". I've stuck with "Mycological Notes" throughout.) 7 pp. 1156 - 1157

Curtis Gates Lloyd (1922) "The Hymenogastraceae. The Octaviana group. The genus Arcangeliella" in Mycological Notes (Lloyd calls some volumes of this "Mycological Writings". I've stuck with "Mycological Notes" throughout.) 7 pp. 1138 - 1143

Curtis Gates Lloyd (1922) "The genus Naematelia" in Mycological Notes (Lloyd calls some volumes of this "Mycological Writings". I've stuck with "Mycological Notes" throughout.) 7 pp. 1149 - 1150


Back to top

Species

Amanita volvata (Peck) Lloyd
Calvatia gigantea (Batsch: Persoon) Lloyd
Lentinus torulosus (Persoon: Fries) Lloyd
Pseudocolus fusiformis (E. Fischer) Lloyd
Volvariella villosavolva (Lloyd) Singer

Back to top

Genera

Pseudocolus Lloyd

Back to top

 

 


Glossary
Glossary
Mushrooms
Mushrooms
HomeMycoPeople
People
Newsletter
Newsletter
Events
Events