Macro-fungi (mushrooms) are well represented in the overall collection at the S.M. Tracy Herbarium.
The macro-fungal collection numbers around 4500 specimens and is the largest collection of its kind in Texas. The majority of the specimens were deposited by David P. Lewis, a regional mycologist from Jasper County, Texas. David has collected extensively along the Gulf-Coast from Florida to Texas, and southward into Mexico. Most of David’s collections at TAES are from the National Park Service’s, Big Thicket National Preserve in the extreme southeastern part of the state.
David is a co-author of the recently published Mushrooms of the Gulf Coast States; A Field Guide to Texas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, and Florida; By Alan E. Bessette, Arleen F. Bessette, and David P. Lewis; available from the University of Texas Press.
The herbarium also houses a large collection of Myxomycetes (slime molds) numbering around 2700 specimens.
These collections are primarily from three collectors: John Leon McGraw, Jr., Katherine E. Winsett, and Steve L. Stephenson. The McGraw collections are largely vouchers for his 1968 Ph.D. Dissertation (A Study of the Myxomycetes of Texas, Texas A&M University) which were transferred to TAES from Lamar University (LAMU) in 2010. The Winsett and Stephenson collections are in part vouchers for Winsett’s Ph.D. Dissertation [Intraspecific Variation in Two Cosmopolitan Myxomycetes, Didymium squamulosum and Didymium difforme (Physarales: Didymiaceae) University of Arkansas-Fayetteville], as well as vouchers for Winsett’s 2012 paper on Big Thicket Slime Molds (An Annotated Checklist of the Myxomycetes of the Big Thicket National Preserve, Texas, JBRIT).
In the near future, the macrofungi and myxomycetes collection data will be available through the Mycology Collections Portal.
