The terracotta fungi of Francesco Valenti Serini (1795-1872)

On the first day of my sabbatical leave at the University of Siena in 2014, I wandered into the Accademia dei Fisiocritici, the natural history museum attached to my professional home for the next three months. The second display room that I entered contained the most spectacular collection of life-sized terracotta models of fungal fruiting bodies that I had ever seen. This exhibition was composed of a diverse collection of fruiting bodies of poisonous, ectomycorrhizal, edible, and saprotrophic fungi found in Tuscany. The importance of this collection would only slowly reveal itself to me in what I came to think of as the Italian way. The collection is both beautiful artistically and important scientifically. The collection (Fig. 1) of Dr. Francesco Valenti Serini is generally unknown outside of Tuscany and through this publication we hope to remedy this situation. What follows is the story of a medical doctor, botanist, mycologist, and artist in the 1800s in Italy and his life's endeavor to educate his fellow Tuscans in how to distinguish between poisonous and edible fungi. Valenti Serini was a Renaissance man but was limited by the science and technology of his day. The authors do not intend what is presented herein to be used as guide to distinguish between poisonous and edible fungi but rather to describe the history of Valenti Serini's work.