Mary Banning’s Mushrooms

Coming soon from Princeton University Press!

“Fungi are considered vegetable outcasts. Like beggars by the wayside dressed in gay attire, they ask for attention but claim none.”

—Mary E. Banning

Mary Banning was one of the first North American mycologists. She was born in 1822 in Maryland. She was of European descent, and she was the youngest of many children. She lived at a time where women were decidedly second class citizens, had very limited access to formal education, and were expected to live entirely domestic lives. Though she was born into wealth, the death of her father in young adulthood left her family financially precarious. And when her mother and sisters became ill, she became their primary caregiver. So it was in between these domestic obligations, while hemmed in by social expectations and biases detrimental to women, that Mary Banning pursued her true calling: mycology.

Over the course of many decades, Mary spent untold hours exploring the forests and fields of Maryland. She meticulously documented all of the fungi should find. She saved her money to pay for carriages to difficult to reach places, for some equipment, a microscope, and for the art supplies she used to render her subjects in exquisite watercolor. She produced impeccable, detailed, and almost poetic morphological descriptions of the fungi she encountered. She was also a fantastic writer, and she penned a number of charming, lucid tales of her adventures, trials, and tribulations, and greatest joys. She compiled these paintings, scientific descriptions, and narratives into a manuscript that she titled, Fungi of Maryland. On account of her gender, however, Banning’s work and talent went under appreciated in her lifetime, and her name was lost to obscurity for almost a century.
Because fungi disregarded by most formal institutions, it was often women who took up their study. Outcast organisms studied by outcast people.

This book will be the original Fungi of Maryland manuscript accompanied by an introduction (written by me) situating Banning’s work in the history of science and mycology.

Read more about the exhibit I curated at the New York State Museum called Outcasts: Mary Banning’s World of Mushrooms and its review in the NYT.