SOME FUNGI GLOW AN EERIE green. Some just reek to high heaven. Some are deadly, others save lives. (Consider, for instance, Penicillium chrysogenum, the golden fuzz that lab assistant Mary Hunt, nicknamed “Moldy Mary,” saw growing on a canteloupe in Peoria, Illinois, in 1943—and which could produce penicillin in far greater quantities than the species famously grown in Alexander Fleming’s lab.)
Despite their variety and range of uses, fungi get neglected, says Andrew Miller. A mycologist and director of the herbarium and fungarium at the Illinois Natural History Survey, Miller spends his whole life around spores, rhizomorphs, and sporocarps, so maybe it’s no surprise that he thinks they don’t get the love they deserve.
This is partly a numbers problem. “For every plant species, [it is said that] there are 30 botanists,” Miller says. “I would estimate that for every single mycologist, there are probably 100,000 species. The ratios are completely off the chart.” As a result, researchers haven’t always known exactly what lives where. Until mycologists recently began digitizing their collections, Miller says—long after botanists and other specialists had done so—specimens were gathering dust in cabinets, with handwritten or typed labels that were largely hidden from the rest of the world. It’s hard to spot an new species, emerging pathogen, or invasive pest if you don’t know what is there to begin with.
To help researchers get a handle on which fungi live where, Miller recently helped spearhead an effort to catalog them in a single, sprawling checklist. With collaborator Scott Bates, from Purdue University Northwest, and assistance from the Macrofungi and Microfungi Collections Consortia, Miller wrangled information about 44,488 species found across North America. The team published this who’s who in the journal Mycologia.
The 127-page paper is a behemoth, and Miller says it’s just the beginning. Earth is home to probably millions of fungal species, he says, and researchers are still in the kiddie pool. The list “is not the be-all, end-all, but it’s a good start,” he adds.
It’s also a good chance to get acquainted with all the kinds of fungus among us. The most common are Lycoperdon perlatum (or common puffball) and Schizophyllum commune (the split gill mushroom). Atlas Obscura asked Miller to introduce some of the other stand-out, superlative specimens.
