Illinois Natural History Survey - University of Illinois

  University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign Mycology Herbarium Database of Type Specimens

This is a database of all type specimens housed by the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign Mycology Herbarium (ILL). The Mycology Herbarium of the University of Illinois, Department of Plant Biology was founded by Thomas Jonatham Burrill in 1868. Burrill was appointed Professor of Natural History that same year and served the university as mycologist, plant pathologist, phytobacteriologist, and administrator until 1912. His collections from the Rocky Mountains, made during the Powell expedition, and around Champaign-Urbana, formed the nucleus of the botanical and mycological collections . Specimens from the fungus disease survey of Illinois, initiated by Burrill in 1884, 1885, and 1887 and largely collected by A.B. Seymour, F.S. Earle, and G.P. Clinton between 1868 and 1884 were added to the collections.

Frank Lincoln Stevens succeeded Burrill as Mycologist and Professor of Plant Pathology in 1914 and remained at the University of Illinois until his death in 1934. He was an authority on ascomycetes, especially the Meliolales and Dothideales. His collections comprising several thousand fungus specimens was donated to ILL. His contributions consist of numerous specimens collected during excursions to Puerto Rico, South America, Central America, Hawaii and the Philippines. Stevens also maintained an extensive exchange program with H. Sydow at Berlin, E.M. Doidge at Pretoria and C.L. Spegazzini at La Plata. Thus, duplicates and portions of types from these and other authors and collectors are deposited at ILL.

Leland Shanor joined the botany faculty at the University of Illinois in 1934 and was appointed Curator of Fungi in 1946. He trained many prominent American mycologists until he left in 1956. Only a few of his collections were deposited at ILL. Donald P. Rogers became a faculty member of the Botany Department in 1957 and curated the mycological collections at ILL until his retirement in 1976. His contributions to the herbarium consist of several thousand specimens of resupinate basidiomycetes from Oregon and Hawaii. J. Leland Crane, Mycologist on staff at the Illinois Natural History Survey and Professor of Plant Pathology, served as curator from 1976 to 1986. Carol A. Shearer curated the collections from 1986 until her retirement in 2007. She contributed numerous collections of aquatic ascomycetes and anamorphic fungi.

Presently, the mycological collections consist of over 40,000 specimens of which 927 are holotypes, 47 lectotypes, 69 isolectotypes, 1,156 isotypes 1,165 paratypes, 308 syntypes, and 204 isosyntypes. This is exclusive of exicatti material, the titles of which are listed in Crane & Jones (1997).

     * Crane, J. Leland and Almut G. Jones. An Annotated Catalogue of Types of the University of Illinois Mycological Collections (ILL). Illinois Biological Monographs 58. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1997. 365 pp.