Collins Mushroom Miscellany. Patrick Harding

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      The prince –Agaricus augustus

      {Laurie Campbell/NHPA}

      In former times scientists had a working knowledge of classical Greek and Latin; in fact, Latin was the international means of communication between scientists of different countries. Up to about the year 1700 most books on learned subjects were written in Latin. For this reason, botanists, who also studied fungi, devised names of plants and fungi that were based on Latin (or Greek). Unfortunately, these names also attempted to describe the organism, with the result that the scientific name often ran to a long sentence; hardly user friendly even to someone with a classical education. From the era of the Ancient Greeks similar species were grouped together and the names of related species started with the same word, what we now call the genus name. For fungi the genus names were often derived more from Greek than from Latin roots. The long-winded problem arose when separating similar species in the same genus by including long descriptions as part of the specific name.

      By the 18th century, following the flowering of science, the number of described species of plants and fungi in Europe had grown enormously. At the same time organisms new to Western science were being brought back from many different parts of the world. It took the genius of Linnaeus to come up with a scientific naming system that standardised Latin names and saved both paper and effort. What he realised was that the name of a plant (and in his day fungi were usually included with the plants) did not need to include a description. Linnaeus introduced what has become known as the binomial system, where the scientific name consists of only two words, the first being the genus name, the second signifying the species.

      The binomial system was adopted for the scientific names of fungi. Look up the scientific name of field mushroom and it will appear as Agaricus campestris, by convention written in italics, with the first letter of the genus name in upper case and that of the species name in lower case. The second word, known as the specific epithet, is often descriptive or gives a reference to the habitat, as in Agaricus silvicola (from Latin silvanus, situated in a wood), the wood mushroom.

      By the end of the 19th century there had been an even greater increase in the number of fungal species described in Europe, but by this time the binomial system for both plants and fungi was running into problems. Some species had been given different names by different botanists, while two or more species were frequently given the same binomial name. To help sort out the problems, the first day of the 20th century saw the implementation of a new international code to be followed in the naming of new plant and fungal species and to sort out previous duplications.

      On the plant side the correct name was deemed to be the one first used by Linnaeus in 1753 or the earliest subsequent date that the plant was first named. For fungi this starting date was put at 1821. This anomaly caused more problems in the naming of fungi and in 1981 the date for the first correct name for fungi was put back to 1753, in line with the plants, but with exceptions for names given by Fries and Persoon (see here). This change has resulted in some recent name changes. Other problems necessitated the need for new genera. If the genus Agaricus, as first used by Fries, had not been split into numerous other genera there would now be over 4,000 species of Agaricus, far too many to assist with their accurate identification.

      With the advent of chemical and genetic analysis, some species previously thought to be similar enough on morphological grounds to be placed in the same genus were found not to be closely related, resulting in species being moved to a different genus and requiring a name change. This has been the case with many fungi in the past 30 years. Frustratingly, this can make research into a particular species difficult as it may have undergone several changes of name. It is also difficult when comparing different books about mushrooms as some authors will be more up to date than others.

      I was recently reading about an edible mushroom in a book published in 1894. The scientific name was given as Agaricus prunulus, a name dating back to 1772 and no longer used. Fortunately, the book mentioned an alternative name, Clitopilus prunulus, which had first been used in 1871. As it happens this is the name that is still used today and so I could relate to the species being described. Beside the scientific names was a common name, ‘plum mushroom’; a name no longer to be found in modern books, which refer to it as the miller. Unlike flowering plants and birds, the majority of fungi were not given English names, the exceptions being those that were good to eat, highly poisonous or had a use (medicinal or otherwise).

      Scientists have long decried the use of common names in all areas of natural history as being a bar to international understanding, but most amateur naturalists find common names much easier to remember and less daunting than scientific names. As a result, many ‘common’ names were hurriedly made up for inclusion in books aimed at the general public, despite such names not necessarily being part of existing folklore. The problem with genuine common names was that different English names arose for the same mushroom in different parts of Britain, and while many fungi had no common name, others had as many as five or six.