A fungarium (plural: fungaria) is a curated collection of preserved fungal specimens and their associated data. Once known as mycological herbaria, these collections provide a permanent record for scientific research. The term was adopted in 2010 to distinguish fungal collections from herbaria (plant collections), in keeping with the modern biological recognition of fungi as a kingdom distinct from plants. Many fungaria are housed within herbaria or other natural history collections, and their holdings may include dried fruiting bodies, host material bearing microscopic fungi, permanent microscope slides, and historically important type specimens.
Fungaria developed out of older botanical and mycological collecting traditions and are now found in museums, universities, botanical institutes, and plant-pathology centres. Their specimens are prepared, labelled, stored, and organized so that they can be studied over long periods, and they are commonly accompanied by notes, images, and other documentation. While some collections emphasize large fungi like mushrooms and bracket fungi, others preserve micromycetes (microfungi) alongside their host plants. These preserved specimens differ from living cultures, but researchers often use both to study fungal classification and evolution.
These collections are used for tracking environmental changes; by comparing specimens across centuries, researchers can model species shifts and changes in biological timing caused by climate change. In modern biology, fungaria provide a library of genetic material for DNA barcoding and genomics, allowing scientists to extract and sequence DNA even from centuries-old specimens. Specimen data are increasingly digitized and shared through online portals using data standards such as Darwin Core. As of 2025, an estimated 15 to 20 million preserved fungal specimens exist worldwide, distributed across approximately 3,900 herbaria and fungaria.
Terminology and definition
The term fungarium was introduced by Brian Spooner and Paul Cannon and presented by David Hawksworth in 2010 as a logical analogue to herbarium for collections of preserved fungi. Historically, mycology was treated as a sub-discipline of botany, so fungal specimens were commonly stored within herbaria. The proposal of fungarium formed part of a broader assertion of mycological independence; a related development is the use of "funga" for the fungi of a particular area, in parallel with "flora" for plants and "fauna" for animals. Hawksworth recommended fungarium for facilities whose taxonomic value centres on representative members of the Fungi, although many institutions have continued to use "herbarium" for historical reasons or for combined botanical-mycological collections.
The term gained wider professional use when the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew adopted it for its mycological collection. While some institutions use the term to explicitly distinguish mycological holdings from plant collections, others maintain the name "herbarium" for historical continuity. Similarly, the term "lichenarium" is occasionally used by institutions that maintain separate collections of lichen specimens.
In scientific usage, a fungarium is centred on preserved fungal material, usually dried tissue such as whole reproductive structures or representative parts, though it may also include permanent microscope slides and, more rarely, specimens preserved in liquid. Fungaria are distinct from culture collections, which maintain living fungal isolates rather than dried reference specimens. In practice, the two are complementary, and a living culture is often linked to a dried voucher or other reference specimen preserved in a herbarium. The term refers not only to the physical collection but also to the curated metadata associated with each specimen, including information such as taxonomy, substrate, sampling location, and collection date. Because of long-standing practice in mycological nomenclature, fungaria may also include fungus-like organisms that are not classified as fungi under modern systems, such as oomycetes and slime moulds.
History
The history of fungaria is closely tied to the early development of botanical herbaria, the oldest of which date to the mid-1500s. Fungal fruiting bodies have been collected and deposited for several centuries, with millions of specimens accumulated chiefly to support fungal taxonomy. Early collections were often personal assemblages or teaching aids used to distinguish edible mushrooms from poisonous ones. Over time, fungal herbaria shifted from keeping one or a few representative specimens per taxon toward documenting developmental stages and geographic variation within species more broadly. In some regions, fungaria developed in close association with government plant-pathology programmes; in South Africa, for example, organised collecting expanded after the creation of a mycology post in 1905 and a separate Division of Plant Pathology and Mycology in 1910, whose early staff built the nucleus of the Pretoria herbarium.
At the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, the mycological collection was established in the late 19th century after the donation of more than 10,000 fungal specimens by the mycologist Reverend Miles Joseph Berkeley. It was later enlarged through donations and collecting by staff and collaborators. More generally, fungaria were often built through a combination of personal collections, academic donations, and purchased exsiccatae series, drawing on wider networks of scientific exchange among mycologists. Amateur mycologists, natural-history societies, and other non-academic collectors have also long played an important part in building fungarium collections and documenting fungal diversity. The collection of Jerzy Wojciech Szulczewski, who gathered specimens in Wielkopolska, Poland, from 1909 to 1966, serves as a representative historical archive. Now housed at Adam Mickiewicz University, it is one of Poland's most extensive records of microfungi and plant pathogens. The archive's transition from decorative 19th-century calligraphy to functional post-war volumes illustrates how biological collections can persist through periods of socio-political disruption. Historical fungaria can also be damaged, dispersed, or lost, and the destruction of collections through war and other disruptions remains a long-term concern for their documentary value.
By the early 20th century, curators were already discussing how mycological specimens should be arranged to balance preservation, space efficiency, and ease of access for study, using packets, folders, boxes, and index card systems. Older fungaria could remain effectively inaccessible until specimens were rehoused and rearranged; at the Rijksherbarium, much of the cryptogamic material was once stored in sacks and packets before mounting and boxing made it more accessible for study. By the middle of 1982, the Soviet Union alone maintained major mycological herbaria across 25 research institutions or museums and 11 universities, academies, and institutes, together preserving more than one million fungal specimens, including over 5,000 type specimens. The transition from morphology-based systematics to phylogenetics in the 1980s and 1990s further changed the role of historical collections, as scientists began extracting DNA from specimens collected more than a century earlier. Historical plant herbaria as well as dedicated mycological collections have also yielded valuable fungal and oomycete records when older specimens were re-examined for disease symptoms that were not the original focus of collection.
Contents and curation
Because curation resources are finite, accession policies commonly prioritize poorly represented taxa and geographic areas, legally collected material, authoritative identifications, and specimens that can be housed and made available for study.
Specimen types
The principal component of most fungaria is the dried fungal sporocarp, the visible reproductive structure produced by the vegetative mycelia living within the substrate. Macromycetes, which produce conspicuous structures such as mushrooms, puffballs, and bracket fungi, are heavily represented in many collections. Micromycetes, including rusts, smuts, and powdery mildews, are often collected together with their host plants. When collecting host-associated fungi, curators may also preserve a voucher of the substrate or host plant so that host identity can be checked later. In fungaria of micromycetes, specimens may include not only dried spore-bearing structures but also part of the substrate, or more rarely dried cultures on nutrient agar prepared from Petri dishes. For biotrophic pathogens, the combined substrate-fungal specimen can also provide material for studying cophylogeny and coevolution. Taxonomic representation in fungaria is uneven: groups with macroscopic fruiting bodies are generally overrepresented, whereas inconspicuous fungi are often underrepresented, creating biases that must be considered in later analysis.
Type specimens are the most critical records in any fungarium, serving as the official reference material tied to a particular species concept and scientific name. Valid naming practice depends on depositing type material in recognized, publicly accessible collections so that other researchers can examine the reference material.
Preservation and storage
Specimens are typically housed in light-, water-, and insect-proof cabinets within herbaria or fungaria. After collection, fungal specimens are accessioned and their data recorded, then processed, labelled, mounted, and filed. Preparation commonly includes prompt drying by warm air, silica gel, or freeze drying; large or watery sporocarps may be sliced to hasten drying. Field labels and notes record the collector, date, locality, habitat, substratum or host, and fresh characters, and incoming material is checked for dryness and often disinfested by deep freezing before being packeted or boxed and filed within the collection. Long-term storage ideally relies on climate-controlled conditions, because warm, humid environments increase the risks of mould growth and insect attack. Routine pest management can include monitoring and freezing incoming specimens before they enter the main collection. In some large collections, high-density compactor systems with open-faced cabinets have been used to increase storage capacity two- to threefold over conventional cabinet arrangements while still allowing the closed units to be sealed against insect pests.
Storage methods have varied over time and between institutions. Historical practice included storing flat specimens in folded paper packets attached to herbarium sheets, while bulkier material was often kept in boxes sized to fit the filing system. Specimens may also be stored using nested protective packaging systems; one example is the "Swedish method", in which paper envelopes are placed in cardboard boxes and then in larger rigid boxes. The Muséum national d'histoire naturelle has described varied packaging approaches in its collections, including boxes, envelopes, bound herbarium boards, and specialised slide collections for microscopic groups. The general aim of curation is to preserve both the physical structure needed for morphological study and the chemical integrity required for molecular analysis.