A private Fungarium of more than 11,000 mushroom specimens was handed over by Marek Wolkowycki to the Bialystok University of Technology (PB) at the Science and Research Centre of the Institute of Forest Sciences of the Bialystok University of Technology in Hajnówka.

Donated by Marek Wołkowycki, the Fungarium contains collections from Europe, the Americas and Asia, including Argentina, Brazil, Guatemala, Belize, Panama, Ecuador and India, among others. Poland’s collected resources come mainly from north-eastern Poland, including the Białowieża Forest – a European hot-spot of fungal biodiversity.

“This collection already contains more than five thousand microscopic fungi that cannot be seen with the naked eye and almost seven thousand macroscopic fungi”, says Marek Wołkowycki, senior scientific and technical specialist, employee of the Department of Silviculture and Forest Management at the Faculty of Construction and Environmental Sciences of the PB. 

The Fungarium is the only such registered collection of fungi in north-eastern Poland and one of two such collections in Poland. The other collection of such scientific significance is located at the W. Szafer Institute of Botany of the Polish Academy of Sciences in Kraków.