About "The Smut Fungi Collection at the Botanische Staatssammlung München"

The Collection

The Smut Fungi Collection at the SNSB – Botanische Staatssammlung München (M) comprises about 7,800 herbarium specimens (240 type specimens) from more than 120 countries with a focus in Bavaria and the Alpes. The collection covers more than 1,100 fungal taxa growing on more than 2,000 different host plant taxa. It is the largest collection of smut fungi (i.e., Ustilaginales, Urocystidales, Doassansiales, Georgefischeriales, Tilletiales, Microbotryales and Entorrhizales) in Europe and covers a large percentage of the world's known 1,500-2,000 smut fungi taxa. Smuts or smut fungi are characterized in their appearance by aggregated dark spore masses forming a dirty dust. They are the second largest group of plant parasitic Basidiomycota after the rust fungi and include important crop parasites such as corn smut (Mycosarcoma maydis, syn. Ustilago maydis).

The collection is set up by more than 1,200 collectors since 200 years and is continuously growing. The eldest specimens were collected by the famous botanist Carl Friedrich Philipp von Martius between 1817 and 1820 in Brazil, see specimen label image of Mycosysinx cissi (M-0229899). The first specimen from Bavaria was documented in 1830 from Bayreuth under the name Polycystis opaca F. Strauss (now Urocystis trientalis) on Trientalis europaea (M-0249827). Another early specimen collected before 1832 is from the poet, writer and botanist Adelbert von Chamisso, see specimen label image of Microbotryum violaceum (M-0236589). Specimens belonging to exsiccatae or exsiccata-like specimen series, as defined in IndExs – Index of Exsiccatae, make up a large part of the collection with around 63 % of the entire collection. The collection includes the smut fungi specimens of the exsiccata Triebel, Microf. Exs. The data of this series, however, are published via an own GBIF dataset The Exsiccatal Series "Triebel, Microfungi exsiccati".

There is a small number of original drawings and graphic reproductions included. Icones are among others from the collection of Friedrich von Strauss (1787-1855), see Polycystis opaca (M-0249823) and from the herbarium of Theodor Alexander Kupka (1889-?), see Sporisorium destruens (= Ustilago panici-miliacei) (M-0230790).

A majority of the specimens were either identified or studied by academic experts of smut fungi, among others Julius Kühn, Hildemar Scholz, Ilse Scholz, Kalman Vánky (see his exsiccata Vanky, Ustil. Exs.) as well as Robert Bauer, Dominik Begerow and Meike Piepenbring with their working groups and students.

Dagmar Triebel was curator for this fungal collection between 1989 and 2023. The collection is now scientifically curated by Anže Žerdoner Čalasan with technical assistance by Diane Falkenberg.

The Data Project and Service

The data project "The Smut Fungi at M" started in 2009 and continued as a side activity within the framework of several biodiversity informatics projects scientifically coordinated by D. Triebel. The data generation and domain-specific data curation in DWB modules was mainly done by Gudrun Kirchhof, D. Triebel and later on by Jean-Baptiste Chazalon. Tanja Weibulat and Markus Weiss helped with their expertise in biodiversity informatics and data processing. Sandra Kügel, Matthias Richter, Veronica Sanz and Ingrid Sebek assisted at times with data management.

The original specimen labels were scanned using LabelScan v. 2.0, a software that provides an automatic recording of barcode labels and the simplified administration of image files (Hagedorn et al. 2000). The file information was imported in the DiversityCollection database by programming scripts developed by Wolfgang Reichert to have an easy and direct way of data transcription from digital label images. Illegible label texts were handed over to experts for old manuscripts. Thanks are due here to Peter Scholz and Siegfried Springer. The nomenclature and orthography of fungal names was taken according to the MycoBank and Index Fungorum and assignment of external identifiers. The host plant names were checked by Catalogue of Life and IPNI (International Plant Names Index). The kind of host-parasite relationship of the single named organisms is directly documented in the database. Historical locality information was retrospectively georeferenced and collector names as well as other agent names were disambiguated by assigning them to unique identifiers. If a specimen was included in an exsiccata series, the corresponding exsiccata series ID (IndExs Exsiccata ID) was added and a link to the IndExs web services was included.

The dataset "The Smut Fungi Collection at M" contributes to the strategic plan of the GBIF Germany node to close organisms gaps in GBIF occurrence data, in this case high quality data from economically important microfungi. Equally it diversifies the FAIR data content of the GBIF-hosted data portal Living Atlas of Nature in Germany (LAND).

Financial support for work of students is provided by the Bayerisches Staatsministerium für Wissenschaft, Forschung und Kunst, at times by the BayPFI programme of the SNSB. The project uses Diversity Workbench components and services, (see Manual), currently developed by Ariane Grunz, Markus Weiss, Anton Link and Stefan Seifert. Since 2020, DWB implementation work is supported by the German Research Foundation DFG under the grant agreement number 442032008 (NFDI4Biodiversity). NFDI4Biodiversity is part of NFDI, the National Research Data Infrastructure in Germany.

The data project "The Smut Fungi at M" and – if not stated otherwise – its supporting files have been copyrighted © 2025–2025 by the SNSB – Botanische Staatssammlung München, Department of Mycology and SNSB IT Center.

Typing and other errors may occur. In such cases we kindly ask the user to contact the editorial staff at the SNSB – Botanische Staatssammlung München. Technical support is provided by the Staatliche Naturwissenschaftliche Sammlungen Bayerns, IT Center.