Checklist of British and Irish Basidiomycota: Web Version and Revised Edition

The first-ever comprehensive checklist and database of the British and Irish Basidiomycota covers more than 3,600 species.

The first comprehensive checklist of these fungi from the British Isles and Ireland, including over 3,600 species, was published in July 2005, the result of a landmark, multi-funded project. A freely available web version of the checklist was launched in December 2006 and is currently being updated.

The first-ever comprehensive checklist and database of the British and Irish Basidiomycota covers more than 3,600 species, including all the mushrooms and toadstools, the bracket fungi, puffballs, earthstars and their allies, chanterelles and tooth-fungi, club and coral fungi, rusts, smuts, and basidiomycetous yeasts. Each species recorded from the British Isles has an entry which includes details of the correct name, authorities and place of publication, synonymy, distribution, frequency, bibliographic and illustration references. Shorter entries are provided for alien species and dubious or incorrect names used in past British literature.

A printed checklist derived from the database was published in 2005 by Kew as a 517 page, A4 book. Work was subsequently undertaken to produce a web version which can be freely consulted by any interested party (taxonomists, recorders, conservationists). This database was launched in December 2006 and is currently being maintained and updated by Kew.