Terms discussed: botanist (pl. botanists)
Historically, when Linnaeus performed his bisection of our biosphere, everything that didn't move was a "plant". Anyone who studied "plant"s was a botanist. So, because this is a historical site, there are a lot of 19th century mycologists in here that get called botanists in all their contemporary sources.
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As late as the 1960's, I've seen textbooks give this arrangement of "the plant kingdom" as their explanation of the taxonomic position of fungi. This is also why, fairly late in this century, you still get Alexander Smith, a fairly mainstream guy, referring to a fungal individual as "the fungous plant."
Similar bloopers:
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Dictionary of Fungi, entry for Cytology: "Unlike most other plants but like most animals, some fungi have centrosomes."
Isley, 101 Botanists:
"Cesalpino described more fungi than any predecessor... Then he climbed the phylogenetic ladder to the ferns and their relatives."
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Because of this historical situation, the appointment of mycologists in universities and museums is still made to botany departments. After all, we study and collect fungi in much the same way that botanists collect plants, and we get along well enough. Plus, we don't have enough clout yet to have departments all to ourselves - - there is safety in numbers!
What are the myxomycetologists going to do, I wonder? If the mycologists are once removed from botany, the myxomycetologists are once removed from mycology...
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