Day 7: I keep falling over the name "Imshaug" in my travels, sometimes attached to lichen taxonomy, other times to research papers or field studies. Although I'm not normally the least bit interested in human history, Imshaug's repetitive presence raised my curiosity. I haven't been able to find out much about him, since it seems that academics are as proprietary about biographical information as they are about scientific discoveries, but what I have been able to find without paying $10 for the privilege of reading a 7-page article is that he was primarily a lichenologist and was the curator of the cryptogam collection at Michigan State University's herbarium. Bingo! That answered one of my main questions right there. Imshaug's name appears in the list of explorers who, in 1941, found Myriosclerotinia caricis-ampullaceae in Mount Rainier National Park, a rare fungus which captured my attention several years back. I wondered how an herbarium specimen of the rare cup fungus cropped up in MSU's collection. Imshaug undoubtedly took one back with him. Imshaug oversaw the studies of a number of graduate students who went on to become noted lichenologists themselves, including Irwin Brodo, author of the forty-pound field guide, "Lichens of North America." The lichen shown above also bears his name: Hypogymnia imshaugii, Forked Tube Lichen.
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