Jakob Emanuel Lange: The man and his mushrooms

Abstract

Jakob Emanuel Lange (1864–1941), Danish mushroom taxonomist and illustrator, was an agricultural educator and economic philosopher. A follower and translator of the American Henry George, Lange was Headmaster of a “Small-holders High-School,” which served as a model for American folk-schools. Lange visited North America on three occasions. The first, in 1927, relied on his professional expertise; the second, in 1931, was purely mycological; and the third, 1939, was a combination of the two. All of this was lived against two World Wars and the Great Depression. This paper summarises the circumstances of Lange’s life against a background of the American mycologists of the day, the ominous events over his adult lifetime and his magnum opus, “Flora Agaricina Danica”, of five volumes illustrating ca. 1200 species on 200 coloured plates.