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2009 Collections Highlights

The Libraries' Cullman Library has acquired some new and interesting items this year. Here we highlight one of them:


Leopold Trattinnick's Die essbaren Schwamme des Oesterreichischen Kaiserstaates[Edible fungi of the Austro-Hungarian Empire]  Vienna, Trieste, 1809. This was acquired by the Libraries in April of this year.  Trattinnick (1764-1849) was a wealthy Austrian botanist and curator at the k.k. Hof-Naturaliencabinette from 1809 to 1835.  He contributed to the study of plant taxonomy and systematics; one of his earliest publications was on classification—Genera planatarum method naturali disposita (Vienna, 1802)—and, among other things, he named the genus Hosta after his contemporary Nicolaus Thomas Host (1761-1834).  Several of his publications are sumptuously illustrated works on the botany of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, including the present work focusing on his specialty in mycology (fungi).


Beautifully illustrated, Die essbaren Schwamme des Osterreichischen Kaiserstaates contains 30 hand-colored plates, unsigned; a second edition, apparently with the same plates but a revised text, was published in 1830.  This edition is held by only eight libraries in the United States and four in Europe. An electronic version of this title is also available through the Libraries' Biodiversity Heritage Library.—Leslie Overstreet and Liz O’Brien

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