Fungal systematics
"Fungi are an accursed tribe, an invention of the Devil, devised by him to disrupt the harmony of the rest of nature created by God, and to confound and drive to despair the botanists who study them."
— From a speech by the French botanist Sébastien Vaillant, delivered in Paris at a gathering of scholars, 17 June 1717.
— From a speech by the French botanist Sébastien Vaillant, delivered in Paris at a gathering of scholars, 17 June 1717.
Cap-forming mushrooms have been known to humans since deep antiquity. In their works, renowned scholars such as Aristotle (4th century BCE), Theophrastus (3rd century BCE), and Dioscorides (1st century CE) mentioned certain edible (e.g., button mushrooms, truffles) and poisonous fungi. Pliny the Younger (1st century CE) noted the abundance of polypores on tree trunks and classified these organisms as fungi. The earliest attempts at fungal classification are attributed to him: he divided all fungi into edible and poisonous. This remains the most ancient classification of fungi — and one that has not lost its relevance even to this day.