Sir Names-a-lot

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Sir Names-a-lot

Have you ever wondered who has named the most fungi? I haven't! But I have wondered who is most represented in the names we have today. Of course, it would take several years of research to find the answer to that question, but as long as I'm using a database here, I thought it might be interesting to find out who has named most of the fungi that we find in Illinois. The results are below:

Topics:
Original authors
Any kind of name
Transfers
And the winner is...

Original authors

Image of Elias Magnus Fries from J. Dörfler (1906 - 1907) Botaniker Porträts

We're starting off with a list of the top people who gave a mushroom its original name, regardless of what genus the mushroom eventually ended up in. I chopped it off at four names; everyone not on the list had fewer than that.

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Mycologists	Number of First Names
Elias Magnus Fries	199
Charles Horton Peck	107
Christian Hendrik Persoon	59
Jean Baptiste Francois Bulliard	41
Lewis David von Schweinitz	34
Miles Joseph Berkeley	29
Alexander H. Smith	23
Jacob Christian Schaeffer	18
Carl Linnaeus	18
Johannes Antonius Scopoli	16
Moses Ashley Curtis	15
August Johann Georg Karl Batsch	13
William Alphonso Murrill	12
Calvin Henry Kauffman	12
George Francis Atkinson	12
Gertrude Simmons Burlingham	11
Lucien Quélet	8
Henri Romagnesi	7
Lexemuel Ray Hesler	7
James Sowerby	6
William Hudson	6
Rolf Singer	6
Charles C. Frost	6
Johann Baptista von Albertini	6
Nicholas Joseph von Jacquin	5
Robert L. Shaffer	5
James Bolton	4
Peter Adolph Karsten	4
Franz Xavier, Freiherr von Wulfen	4
Harry Delbert Thiers	4
Carlo Vittadini	4
Louis Secretan	4

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The list shows the clear advantage of having virgin territory to work with: Berkeley and above were all more or less the first serious mycologists in their territory, and in Berkeley's case, it was because all the british scientific expeditions brought him their fungi to identify. Peck is a surprise second place, having made the most of having all of western New York to himself for the second half of the 19th century. The surprise is not only that he beat out Persoon (who along with Fries is one of the two authors who are the starting points for fungal names, but that he also beat out Schweinitz, who worked in this country before him. Perhaps Schweinitz didn't concentrate so much on the gilled mushrooms, or perhaps we'd have more by him if the website covered a more southern region. The highest-ranking 20th century mycologist is Alexander H. Smith, who spent lots of time on the road, identifying and naming fungi in places that no one ever had before.

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Any kind of name

This list also includes people who validated fungi, or transferred a mushroom from one genus to another. Since fungal nomenclature starts with fungi validated by Fries and Persoon, I excluded fungi validated by them from this tabulation (this was my attempt to make it a contest; it only partially worked).

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Mycologists	Total Number of Citations
Elias Magnus Fries	256
Charles Horton Peck	112
Rolf Singer	73
Christian Hendrik Persoon	66
Jean Baptiste Francois Bulliard	41
Alexander H. Smith	40
Paul Kummer	39
Peter Adolph Karsten	38
Lewis David von Schweinitz	35
Lucien Quélet	32
Miles Joseph Berkeley	30
William Alphonso Murrill	30
Samuel Frederick Gray	25
Carl Linnaeus	18
Jacob Christian Schaeffer	18
Pier Andrea Saccardo	18
Johannes Antonius Scopoli	16
Moses Ashley Curtis	15
Calvin Henry Kauffman	13
August Johann Georg Karl Batsch	13
Robert Kühner	12
George Francis Atkinson	12
Lexemuel Ray Hesler	12
Marinus Anton Donk	11
Gertrude Simmons Burlingham	11
Louis Secretan	10
Henri Romagnesi	8
Zdenek Pouzar	8
Scott A. Redhead	7
René Charles Joseph Ernest Maire	7
Victor Fayod	7
Orson K. Miller, Jr.	7
Frantisek Kotlaba	7
Robert L. Shaffer	7
Claude Casimir Gillet	7

Transfers

Image of Peter Adolph Karsten from Curtis Gates Lloyd (1898 - 1925) Mycological Notes

The most striking difference between the second list and the first is the position of Singer, who has vaulted into third place from a previous tie for places 19-24. He achieved this by his record 67 species transfers, as shown in the next chart. At this point, the late 19th century and 20th century mycologists really start to come into their own. If the years before, say, 1875 are dominated by original authors, the validators and transferers begin to dominate from then on. After all, most of the big, easy-to-spot things were named by 1875; and until a bunch of new genera were created around 1875, there really weren't that many places to transfer a mushroom to. So here we start seeing people like S. F. Gray and Kummer, who made their living validating older authors' genera and raising their sections to the level of genus. And we get people like Quélet, Karsten and Patouillard, who created many of our modern genera. The next chart shows author citations that are not first author citations and are not validations by Fries or Persoon, that is, mostly transfers from one genus to another:

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Mycologists	Number of Transfers and Validations
Rolf Singer	67
Elias Magnus Fries	57
Paul Kummer	39
Peter Adolph Karsten	34
Samuel Frederick Gray	24
Lucien Quélet	24
William Alphonso Murrill	18
Pier Andrea Saccardo	18
Alexander H. Smith	17
Marinus Anton Donk	11
Robert Kühner	11
Zdenek Pouzar	8
Orson K. Miller, Jr.	7
Claude Casimir Gillet	7
Victor Fayod	7
Christian Hendrik Persoon	7
Frantisek Kotlaba	7
Albert Pilát	6
René Charles Joseph Ernest Maire	6
Louis Secretan	6
Scott A. Redhead	6
Joseph Schroeter	5
Narcisse Theophile Patouillard	5
Curtis Gates Lloyd	5
James Herbert Ginns	5
Lexemuel Ray Hesler	5
E. J. Gilbert	5
Charles Horton Peck	5
Louis René Tulasne	4
Adalbert Ricken	4

And the winner is...

Image of Elias Magnus Fries from Curtis Gates Lloyd (1898 - 1925) Mycological Notes

Elias Magnus Fries, by a landslide! He ranks first in first names and total citations, and is a close second for transfers and non-Friesian (!) validations.

I must say that I was a little surprised at this, not so much that Fries won, but at the margin of his victory. I had thought of him primarily as a codifier, solidifying the species concepts of those who came before him; but this tabulation shows how many species he named on his own. You also have to bear in mind that his species are European, and we've steadily been eliminating European names from American usage as we discover how unique this continent's flora is.

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All hail Sir Names-a-lot!

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