page_title: Fungi of Australia
section_title: History
hierarchical_section_title: Fungi of Australia / History
caption_attribution_description: English: Stinkhorn (Aseroë rubra) in the camping ground at Springbrook, Queensland. Note: The lack of the brown spores may be a result of recent heavy rain, or may simply not have yet appeared. Français&#160;: Aseroë rubra, un champignon australien sentant la charogne. Photo prise dans un camping du parc national de Springbrook, dans le Queensland (Australie).
context_page_description: The Fungi of Australia form an enormous and phenomenally diverse group, a huge range of freshwater, marine and terrestrial habitats with many ecological roles, for example as saprobes, parasites and mutualistic symbionts of algae, animals and plants, and as agents of biodeterioration. Where plants produce, and animals consume, the fungi recycle, and as such they ensure the sustainability of ecosystems.
  Knowledge about the fungi of Australia is meagre. Little is known about aboriginal cultural traditions involving fungi, or about aboriginal use of fungi apart from a few species such as Blackfellow's bread. Humans who came to Australia over the past couple of centuries brought no strong fungal cultural traditions of their own. Fungi have also been largely overlooked in the scientific exploration of Australia. Since 1788, research on Australian fungi, initially by botanists and later by mycologists, has been spasmodic and intermittent.
context_section_description: Early collections in Western Australia were made by James Drummond and Ludwig Preiss in the early to mid-19th Century. They sent their specimens to W.J. Hooker at Kew and Elias Magnus Fries respectively.
  John Burton Cleland conducted the first systematic review of Australian fungi in a landmark monograph of fungal specimens at the South Australian Herbarium. Comprising some 16,000 specimens, this included fungi from elsewhere in the country as well as South Australia. He was assisted by such people as Edwin Cheel, keeper of the Herbarium at the Royal Botanic Gardens in Sydney, Leonard Rodway of Tasmania and Phyllis Clarke (later North), who provided some watercolour paintings. These three were honoured with at least one specific epithet of new species described by Cleland. This resulted in two comprehensive volumes (1934–35) on the larger fungi of South Australia, and was reprinted in 1976. These were reworked and published in 1997 as Larger Fungi of Southern Australia by contemporary mycologist Cheryl Grgurinovic, though funding only allowed the publication of a volume on larger fungi.
  Bruce Fuhrer and Tony Young, whose book was first published in 1982 and has been revised several times since, have been instrumental in promoting Australian fungi to the general public with popular books on fungi in Australia. Published knowledge is augmented by locally produced guides in Western Australia, Queensland and Tasmania.
caption: Aseroë rubra, at Springbrook, Queensland
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