Fleecy Milk-Cap

This illustration of Agaricus vellereus, a fleecy milk-cap mushroom, is one of 163 original watercolors in the four-volume manuscript for Illustrations of British Mycology, an 1847 work by Anna Maria Hussey and her sister, Frances Reed. Resisting the ornamental, floral art popular with Victorian women of their class, the sisters illustrated the dirt and rot of fungi observed from life. The sisters ventured the English countryside to find their subjects, traveling to unladylike terrain Hussey described as “out-of-the-way wild places, far from carriage tracks, and often where large herds of cattle are pastured.”