Collection of fungi watercolours by Dr Fritz Wohlfarth (1906-2005)

Dr Fritz Wohlfarth was born on 11 January 1906 in Saalfeld (Thuringia, Germany). He studied at the Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität in Munich where he received his doctorate in chemistry. For decades he worked as a sales representative for a company in Munich. In 2002, he described how he carried painting utensils in a suitcase with him on his business trips so that he could paint portraits of freshly collected mushroom and fungi fruit bodies or other natural objects under a daylight lamp in the evening. Even after his retirement in the 1970s, he continued to paint. F. Wohlfarth died on 4 April 2005 in Kamsdorf (Thuringia). Since 1970, the BSM owns a first collection of 121 fungi watercolours by F. Wohlfarth,. The arrangement was mediatedby the mycologist Prof. Dr A. Bresinsky. After renewed contact in 2002, the artist donated a further 1,785 watercolours to the BSM.

The BSM is now able to present a total of 1,906 images of fungi, mainly mushrooms online. Almost all of the approximately 800 species are native to Central Europe. The paintings themselves are dated between 1952 and 1977, produced on thin cardboard, mostly in standardised size (height x width) of 19.5 x 12 cm (rarely up to 19.5 x 23 cm) and numbered. F. Wohlfarth, as a skilled fungi expert, identified most of the taxa to species level or had the identification checked by experts. The paintings provide information on the site and location, date of discovery and date on which the drawing was carried out, as well as notes on transient features such as smell, consistency, and taste; occasionally microfeatures such as spores are outlined. Some contain supplementary dried fungalmaterial (lamellae or spore powder), which is particularly helpful from a scientific point of view. In addition to the Latin name of the fungi, a German name is also provided.

The digital indexing of the collection was initialised by Dr Dagmar Triebel as curator in charge of the collection as early as 2001, and the identification of the fungi was checked by experts and adapted to modern taxonomy. The taxonomic identity of the individual organisms and their occurrence in time and space, linked to the image files, are managed, archived, and published via various portals at the SNSB IT Centre. They are freely available via the Global Biodiversity Information Facility (GBIF) science portal in accordance with international data exchange standards.

>> This collection is part of the holdings of the Botanische Staatssammlung München (Botanical State Collection Munich) (SNSB-BSM) and the Staatliche Naturwissenschaftliche Sammlungen Bayerns (State Natural Science Collections of Bavaria) (SNSB).