Before I became a mycologist, I knew Beatrix Potter as the author of some of my favourite childhood books. It was only years later that I learned she was also a serious student of fungi.
The discovery delighted me, but also surprised me. Delighted because one of my childhood heroes had suddenly become a scientific one too. Surprised because mushrooms barely feature in her stories and because I had thought there was something of a contradiction between the imagination of a children’s author and the meticulous observation required of a mycologist.
