In a previous SFSG newsletter Heino Lepp pointed out that material collected in National Parks and other reserves should be deposited in a recognised Herbarium. Apart from the legal requirement to lodge collections, there are some very good reasons why collections should end up in a Herbarium, and indeed why collections should be secured in the first place.

One important reason to collect material is that published records need to be backed up by voucher collections. The foray lists provided in the SFSG newsletter and the newsletters and magazines of other organizations serve as a useful source of information on distribution and ecology, but as many as possible of the species listed should be supported by voucher material. It is preferable that any list of fungi is supported by voucher material for every species, no matter how common; but even collecting just the unusual species would be a start.

Any published record which is not accompanied by a detailed description and is unsupported by a voucher collection has an element of doubt attached to the veracity of the identification. It might be argued that surely there are some common and well known species that don't need a voucher collection, but keep in mind that the taxonomy of Australian species is in a state of continual change, as exemplified by cases such as Armillaria, where it is now known that several species are represented amongst material previously lumped under Armillaria mellea.

The need for vouchers is particularly important for species which are not recorded from Australia in any other publications. Such records when unsupported by vouchers will only cause endless trouble since future workers can never be sure if the record is accurate or not without access to a collection on which critical characters can be checked. A number of species have been included in various lists in the SFSG Newsletter over the past few years which to my knowledge have not otherwise been recorded from Australia. Examples are Mycena aff. adonis, Marasmiellus aff. laschiopus, Crinipellis asteroflagellata, Cortinarius brunneopilea, Galerina muscolignosa and Tricholomopsis subrutilans. It is unclear as to whether or not voucher material exists for such species.

Another example which illustrates why vouchers are important is the inclusion of Laccaria amethystina in the list of species observed at Jervis Bay on the SFSG foray of 6-8 May1994. There are several other references to Australian occurrences of this species, but they all lack voucher material. There are also a few Australian collections filed under L. amethystina in herbaria, but all are misidentified. Thus I consider that the species does not occur in Australia. Several of the indigenous species of Laccaria may have on occasion a vinaceous tint, but I have never seen any wholly purple species. Each time that a record of L. amethystina is published, I am however intrigued since I think that maybe there really is a purple species in Australia which is very rare or restricted to some specific habitat, which I have overlooked. If there is no voucher, then field work may have to be undertaken in the area, but we well know that the sporadic fruiting of many species means that it is difficult to be sure of when to find fruiting bodies. The existence of a voucher makes things a whole lot simpler.

Collections need to be lodged in Herbaria not only to support published records, but just as importantly in order to build up the representativeness of collections both in terms of the geographic distribution of particular species, and also coverage of the range of variation in morphology, host preference and other characters of each species. The number of specimens, of even common species, in Australian herbaria is often surprisingly small. A decent lot of specimens can be of great help when commencing monographic and other studies.

Perhaps the SFSG could put together a reference set of the species which are encountered on forays. A good collection of each species could be lodged at one or more Herbaria, and duplicate material retained by the Group for reference. Each time a new species is encountered, a collection could be added to the reference set. Additional collections of species already encountered could also be collected whenever practicable.