Curtis Gates Lloyd

Curtis Gates Lloyd (July 17, 1859 – November 11, 1926) was an American mycologist known for both his research on the gasteroid and polypore fungi, as well as his controversial views on naming conventions in taxonomy. He had a herbarium with about 60,000 fungal specimens, and described over a thousand new species of fungi. Along with his two brothers John Uri Lloyd and Nelson Ashley Lloyd, he founded the Lloyd Library and Museum in Cincinnati.

Early life

Born on July 17, 1859, in Florence, Kentucky, Curtis Gates Lloyd was the third son of Nelson Marvin and Sophia Webster Lloyd. He and his family moved to Crittenden, Kentucky, in 1867, where Lloyd lived until he was 18. He moved to Cincinnati and was employed as an apprentice in Johnson's pharmacy. This was where he met Dr. John King, physician and editor of the American Dispensatory; the close friendship they formed helped to fuel Lloyd's interest in botany. Lloyd earned his pharmacy certificate while working at the pharmacy. Later, Lloyd was a salesman with Hale, Justice and Co., a drug supply company, and he began accumulating a personal collection of flowering plants.

Career Lloyd, together with his brother John Uri Lloyd, started publishing Drugs and Medicines of North America, a quarterly publication that became popular in the fields of botany and medicine. Because he published privately, Lloyd was free to criticize other mycologists guilty of hastily publishing new species. In the article "The Myths of Mycology" (1917) he wrote... the mistakes, blunders, and personal foibles of mycological writers have been my chief source of pleasure. I have never failed to express myself plainly, and have spared neither friend nor antagonist. I have always tried to be good-natured in my comments, and as a general thing the parties affected are taking it more as a joke on themselves and an idiosyncrasy of myself. ... Nor am I deceiving myself into the belief that I will accomplish what I am trying to bring about, the abolition of personal advertisements in mycology.

His conservative approach to classification was later criticized by Marinus Anton Donk, who wrote "The terror that Lloyd spread among North American mycologists and abroad by ridiculing everything that reminded him of taxonomic innovation in the systematics of fungi ... has not yet been completely overcome. His slipshod taxonomic methods were accepted as standard by some of his correspondents."

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