An 1801 earthstar plate shows more than an unusual shape. A curling puff turns James Sowerby’s fungal portrait into a small explanation.
A mushroom seems to have become a tiny pedestal. Its rounded center is lifted on short supports above a star of pointed lobes. Behind it stands a second example, and from that one rises an elegant curl of pale lines. The curl is the detail that turns the picture from a portrait into a small event.
James Sowerby’s plate 313 is labeled Lycoperdon coliforme, the fungus now called Myriostoma coliforme. The line at the bottom dates this particular plate to 1 January 1801. That is more precise than assigning it the starting date of the multi-part book, Coloured figures of English fungi or mushrooms, in which it appeared.
A cloud that explains
The foreground specimen provides the clearest view of the structure. Its central body is wider than it is tall, with small dark openings visible on its upper surface. Beneath it, narrow supports separate that body from the spreading outer layer. The lobes bend down and curl at their tips, casting short shadows onto the ground.
The smaller specimen repeats the arrangement from a different angle. Its plume points to a process the still object alone would not explain. In his accompanying description, Sowerby distinguishes the fungus by its several openings for releasing powder and by the numerous little supports beneath its head.
Our interpretation is that the cloud operates almost like an arrow in a diagram. It directs attention toward an action, but it uses the same delicate line language as the rest of the illustration. It should not be mistaken for a measured account of the exact size or shape of a spore cloud. A convention can be informative without being a photographic record.
The specimen had a sender
Sowerby’s short text also thanks T. J. Woodward of Bungay for supplying good specimens. That acknowledgment adds a person who is absent from the plate itself. The image came from a network of collecting and correspondence, rather than from a solitary illustrator finding every subject unaided.
The Royal Horticultural Society describes Sowerby as the maker of both the publication’s plates and their accompanying descriptions. Here, those two forms of explanation are unusually complementary. The engraving lets us inspect the small supports; the text tells us that Sowerby considered them distinctive and names the contributor who made their study possible.
The scanned page carries another layer of history in its handwritten names. These sit apart from the printed image and date line. They remind us that a book can continue to be classified, compared, and annotated after publication. A change of name does not make an old illustration useless; it means the reader has another relationship to investigate.
This is a historical image to study, not a guide for deciding whether a wild fungus is edible. Its reward is a different kind of recognition: noticing that an apparently peculiar outline has working parts. The little plume asks us to move from “What does it look like?” to “What does it do?” The supporting text then makes that first visual guess more precise.
Artwork & sources
Lycoperdon coliforme, plate 313, Coloured figures of English fungi or mushrooms
James Sowerby · 1 January 1801, as printed on the plate · Colored engraved book illustration
LuEsther T. Mertz Library, New York Botanical Garden, digitized through the Biodiversity Heritage Library / Internet Archive. James Sowerby, plate 313; scan leaf 848.
View the source object. Image: Public domain; New York Botanical Garden / Internet Archive metadata (NOT_IN_COPYRIGHT).
- New York Botanical Garden scan: plate 313
- Sowerby’s original accompanying text
- RHS: Sowerby’s fungi publication
- Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew: Myriostoma coliforme
Historical and scientific details are grounded in the sources above. Interpretations of composition are Storied Spark’s own readings. Storied Spark is independent of the collecting institutions.
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