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| Kew Gardens Fungarium | |
|---|---|
| Name | Kew Gardens Fungarium |
| Established | 1854 |
| Location | Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, Richmond, London |
| Type | Mycological herbarium |
| Collections | Fungal specimens, cultures, DNA extracts, illustrations |
| Director | Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew |
| Website | Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew |
Kew Gardens Fungarium The Kew Gardens Fungarium is a world-class mycological collection housed within the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, that supports taxonomy, systematics, and conservation. Founded in the nineteenth century, it underpins research across institutions such as the Natural History Museum, the British Museum, the Linnean Society, the Royal Society, and the University of Oxford. The Fungarium connects historical collectors like Joseph Dalton Hooker, Sir William Jackson Hooker, and Elias Magnus Fries with modern initiatives at institutions such as the Smithsonian Institution, the Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh, and the Botanical Research Institute of Texas.
The Fungarium's origins trace to nineteenth-century expeditions by figures including Joseph Dalton Hooker, Alexander von Humboldt, Charles Darwin, and Joseph Banks that deposited material alongside repositories such as the British Museum and the Linnean Society; later curators collaborated with Alfred Russel Wallace, Ferdinand von Mueller, and Thomas Jefferson Page. Through the Victorian era the collection expanded via contributions from collectors like Miles Joseph Berkeley, Elias Magnus Fries, and William Nylander, while twentieth-century expansions reflected work by George Massee, Edvard August Vainio, and Rolf Singer, and exchanges with herbaria at the Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh, Kew's Mary S. Donaldson, and the New York Botanical Garden. During the interwar and postwar periods the Fungarium engaged with institutions including the University of Cambridge, the University of London, the Natural History Museum, and the Commonwealth Mycological Institute, and later integrated molecular protocols developed at EMBL, the Sanger Institute, and Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory.
The Fungarium houses type specimens, historical collections, reference exsiccatae, and living cultures that complement holdings at the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, the Natural History Museum, the New York Botanical Garden, the Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh, and the Field Museum. Holdings include types described by Elias Magnus Fries, Miles Joseph Berkeley, and Rolf Singer, plus regional collections from India, Malaysia, Brazil, South Africa, and Australia donated by collectors linked to the British Museum, the Linnean Society, the Royal Society, and the Natural History Museum. Specimens are cross-referenced with archives at the Bodleian Library, the British Library, the Smithsonian Institution Archives, and institutional databases maintained by the Sanger Institute, EMBL-EBI, and GBIF.
Kew's Fungarium underpins taxonomic revisions and monographs cited alongside works published by Cambridge University Press, Oxford University Press, Springer, and Elsevier, informing studies in journals such as Nature, Science, Mycologia, and Fungal Diversity. Research outputs have influenced phylogenetic frameworks developed at the Sanger Institute, EMBL-EBI, and the University of California, Berkeley, and contributed to nomenclatural decisions referenced by the International Mycological Association, the International Commission on the Taxonomy of Fungi, and the Linnean Society. Collaborative projects with the Natural History Museum, the New York Botanical Garden, the University of Copenhagen, and the Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh have produced DNA barcode libraries used by GBIF, BOLD Systems, and the Global Genome Biodiversity Network.
The Fungarium supports conservation programs associated with the IUCN, Botanic Gardens Conservation International, and the Darwin Initiative, aiding red list assessments and biodiversity action plans adopted by UK government departments and international conventions such as the Convention on Biological Diversity and the Nagoya Protocol. Its specimen data and DNA resources inform ex situ conservation projects coordinated with the Eden Project, the Zoological Society of London, and the Millennium Seed Bank Partnership, and guide habitat restoration efforts linked to Natural England, the Environment Agency, and international partners in Brazil, Madagascar, and Indonesia.
Facilities include climate-controlled stacks, molecular laboratories, imaging suites, and cryogenic repositories comparable to infrastructure at the Sanger Institute, EMBL, and the Natural History Museum; specimen management uses databases interoperable with GBIF, Atlas of Living Australia, and JSTOR Global Plants. Digitization partnerships with the Biodiversity Heritage Library, the Natural History Museum, the New York Botanical Garden, and Google Arts & Culture have accelerated online access to type images, label metadata, and sequence data deposited in GenBank and ENA, enabling integrative analyses with data platforms at EMBL-EBI, BOLD Systems, and the Global Genome Biodiversity Network.
Access provisions balance research loans and public outreach through collaborations with the Victoria and Albert Museum, the British Library, the Natural History Museum, and the Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh; educational programs align with curricula from the Open University, University of Oxford, and University of Cambridge. Public engagement includes exhibitions developed with the Science Museum, educational resources co-produced with the Royal Society, citizen science initiatives with Zooniverse, and workshops run with the Linnean Society, the British Mycological Society, and Botanic Gardens Conservation International.
The Fungarium maintains formal partnerships with the Natural History Museum, the New York Botanical Garden, the Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh, the Sanger Institute, EMBL-EBI, and GBIF, and works with academic departments at the University of Oxford, University of Cambridge, Imperial College London, and King's College London. International collaborations extend to the Smithsonian Institution, the Jardim Botânico do Rio de Janeiro, CSIRO, the Australian National Herbarium, the Chinese Academy of Sciences, and the University of São Paulo, facilitating specimen exchange, joint grants from agencies such as the Wellcome Trust, the Royal Society, Horizon Europe, and the Leverhulme Trust, and coordinated training with the British Council and UNESCO.
Category:Herbaria