ITHACA, N.Y. -- About 1 percent of Cornell's Fungi of China Collection, as interpreted through the lens of Department of Plant Pathology photographer Kent Loeffler, is on display at Mann Library through Aug. 31.

The 2,018-specimen collection has been held for safekeeping here since the early years of World War II. In a Reunion weekend presentation, scheduled for 10 a.m. Friday, June 10, in Mann Library, assistant professor of mycology Kathie Hodge will tell how the Chinese collection came to Cornell and discuss its significance. Then Loeffler will discuss the photographic techniques he used to turn "little bits of dried brown stuff" into objects of beauty and intrigue.

According to Hodge, the materials held at Cornell represent a major part of the national fungus collection of China. Arrangements to send the specimens here were made by a former graduate student, S.C. Teng, who had left the College of Agriculture without completing his Ph.D. in the 1920s to conduct biological surveys by horseback throughout his native China. When Japan invaded China in the 1930s, Teng worried that scientific collections would be damaged. Duplicates of fungi in the national collection were spirited out of Beijing by oxcart and shipped to the United States. 

Teng's fears were realized when the Chinese National Herbarium was ransacked during World War II. Lost forever were numerous "type specimens," the first of their kind to be collected and scientifically identified as representatives of their species. Of the more than 2,000 items in the Fungi of China Collection at the Cornell Plant Pathology Herbarium, 57 are irreplaceable specimens.