SPEGAZZINI'S DRAWINGS OF FUNGI

Welcome to the home page for Spegazzini's drawings of fungi.

In the herbarium of the Instituto Spegazzini there is a large collection of fungal specimens accumulated between 1875 and 1926 by Carlos Spegazzini, the eminent Argentine mycologist. About 5000 of these specimens are nomenclatural types, and many more are rare or unusual fungi collected from many locations in Argentina, Chile and Paraguay during the early days of botanical exploration in southern South America. Spegazzini's numerous publications describing these fungi almost never included illustrations, but a very large number of the original packets of his specimens bear beautiful, delicate, carefully-drawn and scientifically accurate pencil drawings of the material enclosed. These pictures range in size from approximately 7 to 10cm square. In some cases, where material is scanty, these drawings may be the only remaining evidence of the microscopic features of the fungus he originally observed. Even since his death in 1926, with few exceptions, these drawings have never been published. Unfortunately, most of them are now very faint and, with some now being over one hundred years old, there is a danger that they could be lost.

In April 1996 work began on a project to safeguard the scientific information contained in these precious pictures by scanning them into a PC-compatible digitized format. The first illustrations to be treated were a selection of his drawings of ascomycetes. An example of one of the drawings, Anthostomella platensis, may be viewed. A CD-ROM will shortly become available with many hundreds of these images. On the CD-ROM, one copy of each image will be presented exactly as scanned, with a second copy resized to enable convenient viewing on a monitor; the CD-ROM will also contain a large quantity of additional information about each name, including its systematic position and place of publication.

Director: A.M. Arambarri Instituto Spegazzini, Calle 53 Nš 477, La Plata 1900, Argentina

Producer: T.J. Minter

Scientific advisors:

M.N. Cabello, Instituto Spegazzini, Calle 53 Nš 477, La Plata 1900, Argentina D.W. Minter

Instituto Spegazzini, Calle 53 Nš 477, La Plata 1900, Argentina	Linnean Society of London, Burlington House, Piccadilly, London W1V 0LQ, UK	International Mycological Institute (CABI Bioscience, CAB International), Bakeham Lane, Egham, Surrey TW20 9TY, UK
The Systematics Association, Natural History Museum, London SW7 5BD, UK

The project gratefully thanks the Linnean Society of London's A.G. Side Fund, the Systematics Society's Botanical Research Fund, the Badman-Shepherd Travel Award Fund, and Hampton School's Headmaster's Discretionary Fund for financial assistance.