Rare fungus named after Philadelphia botanist

It’s an honor of a strange sort. Dr. Alfred “Ernie” Schuyler, a former botany curator at the Academy of Natural Sciences, has finally had something named after him.

A fungus.

A colleague has named Vezdaea schuyleriana, a barely visible lichen known to exist only in one place, after Schuyler, who studied rare plants for 50 years.

The fungus exists only on a single boulder in rural central Pennsylvania, northwest of Lewisburg.

Schuyler’s reaction? “I love it!”