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Stag’s Horn Fungus

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Date

1744

Artist

Georg Dionysius Ehret (1708-1770)

Collection

The Royal Society

Description

Plate 2 figure 1 from the paper “An account of a new species of fungus”, by John Martyn, Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society, vol. 43 (1744) pp.263-264. The specimen, classified by John Martyn as “Boletus caule ramose”, was most likely Stag’s Horn fungus, [Xylaria hypoxylon]. An endorsement verso “Jan 24 1744/45” indicates that this painting shown to Fellows of the Royal Society at a meeting of the Royal Society on 24 January 1745. Martyn states [L&P/1/345/2] that “In the latter part of the Summer of the year 1744 Mr Ehret the painter brought me a Fungus of a very extraordinary shape & size which had been found growing on a piece of the trunk of an Elm, in a damp cellar in the Hay-market”.