Banning was one of America’s first mycologists, who uncovered, documented, and illustrated 23 fungal species new to science in the mid-1800s.
Banning, devoting any precious free time she had outside of domestic obligations to her research, completed her unpublished manuscript, Fungi of Maryland, in 1899. The manuscript contained 175 exquisite watercolor illustrations and descriptions of mushroom species. (You can see those here).
It was entrusted to then-New York State Museum Mycologist Charles Peck and remained hidden in the Museum’s collection for nearly a century before being rediscovered in the 1980s.
“Just as fungi were seen throughout history as ‘outcasts’ by Western European scholars, so too were women, including Mary Banning,” Curator of Mycology Dr. Patricia Kaishian…