The transition from amateur to professional in natural history is generally regarded as having taken place in the nineteenth century, but landmark events such as the 1917 appointment of mycologist Johanna Westerdijk (1883–1961) as the first female professor in the Netherlands indicate that the pattern of change for women was more varied and delayed than for men. We investigate this transition in mycology, and identify only 43 women in the Western World who published scientific mycological literature pre-1900, of whom twelve published new fungal taxa. By charting the emergence of these women over time, and comparing the output of self-taught amateurs and university graduates, we establish the key role of access to higher education in female participation in mycology. Using a suite of strategies, six of the self-taught amateurs managed to overcome their educational disadvantages and name names — Catharina Dörrien (the first to name a fungal taxon), Marie-Anne Libert, Mary Elizabeth Banning, Élise-Caroline Bommer, Mariette Rousseau, and Annie Lorrain Smith. By 1900, the professional era for women in mycology was underway, and increasing numbers published new taxa. Parity with male colleagues in recognition and promotion, however, remains an ongoing issue.
In the nineteenth century, systematic botanists were preoccupied with the search for a so-called 'natural' system of classification, in which the names, order and rank of groups conveyed information about the relationships between plants. One such was Ferdinand Mueller who first identified this as a problem in which he was interested as a young man in Schleswig-Holstein. After moving to Australia in 1847, he encountered a flora so rich and diverse that he was emboldened to draw his own conclusions in systematics. These incorporated ideas originating in the previous century such as 'continuity' and the 'constancy' of species, evident in the work of Linnaeus and Jussieu, but also newer ideas, especially in relation to gymnosperms. Mueller met with resistance to his version of the natural system from Joseph Hooker and George Bentham at Kew Gardens in England, but received tacit support from colleagues in continental Europe who were busy making their own changes to classification. In Australia, Mueller was able to bring his influence to bear more successfully, and those who followed his version of the natural system helped him to establish a more independent local tradition in science.
The citation ‘Rockingham Bay, J. Dallachy’ is prominent in late nineteenth-century taxonomic publications associated with the flora of tropical Queensland. John Dallachy (1804–71) was employed as a botanical collector by the Melbourne Botanic Garden under the directorship of Baron Ferdinand von Mueller. Between 1864 and 1871, Dallachy resided in the Rockingham Bay area where he collected ~3500 botanical specimens of which ~400 were described as new taxa of flowering plants, ferns, fungi and bryophytes, making him Mueller’s most prolific collector of type specimens, apart from Mueller himself. In this, the first of two articles about Dallachy, we outline the origin, and development of this successful botanical collaboration, identifying the experiences and qualities that prompted Dallachy to become a botanical collector, the friendship that formed between Mueller and Dallachy in the face of Dallachy’s reversal of fortunes at the Melbourne Botanic Garden, and the circumstances that led to Dallachy and Mueller’s shared project to investigate the botanical riches of the floristically diverse Wet Tropics Bioregion.
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