Acharius was a country doctor at Wadstena on Lake Mälar in Sweden, as he himself calls it, “the country of lichens.” He was attracted to the study of them by their singular mode of growth and organization, both of thallus and reproductive organs, for which reason he finally judged that lichens should be considered as a distinct Order of Cryptogamia.
In his first tentative work[85] he had followed his great compatriot Linnaeus, classifying all the species known to him under the one genus Lichen, though he had progressed so far as to divide the unwieldy Genus into Families and these again into Tribes, these latter having each a tribal designation such as Verrucaria, Opegrapha, etc. He established in all twenty-eight tribes which, at a later stage, he transformed into genera after the example of Weber.
Acharius, from the beginning of his work, had allowed great importance to the structure of the apothecia as a diagnostic character though scarcely recognizing them as true fruits. He gave expression to his more mature views first in the Methodus Lichenum[86], then subsequently in the larger Lichenographia Universalia[87]. In the latter work there are forty-one genera arranged under different divisions; the species are given short and succinct descriptions, with habitat, locality and synonymy. No material alteration was made in the Synopsis Lichenum[88], a more condensed work which he published a few years later.
The Cryptogamia are divided by Acharius into six “Families,” one of which, “Lichenes,” is distinguished, he finds, by two methods of propagation: by propagula (soredia) and by spores produced in apothecia. He divides the family into classes characterized solely by fruit characters, and these again into orders, genera and species, of which diagnoses are given. With fuller knowledge many changes and rearrangements have been found necessary in the application and extension of the system, but that in no way detracts from the value of the work as a whole.
In addition to founding a scientific classification, Acharius invented a terminology for the structures peculiar to lichens. We owe to him the names and descriptions of “thallus,” “podetium,” “apothecium,” “perithecium,” “soredium,” “cyphella” and “cephalodium,” the last word however with a different meaning from the one now given to it. He proposed several others, some of which are redundant or have fallen into disuse, but many of his terms as we see have stood the test of time and have been found of service in allied branches of botany.
Lichens were studied with great zest by the men of that day. Hue[89] recalls a rather startling incident in this connection: Wahlberg, it is said, had informed Dufour that he had sent a large collection of lichens from Spain to Acharius who was so excited on receiving them, that he fell ill and died in a few days (Aug. 14th, 1819). Dufour, however, had added the comment that the illness and death might after all be merely a coincidence.
Among contemporary botanists, we find that De Candolle[90] in the volume he contributed to Lamarck’s French Flora, quotes only from the earlier work of Acharius. He had probably not then seen the Methodus, as he uses none of the new terms; the lichens of the volume are arranged under genera which are based more or less on the position of the apothecia on the thallus. Flörke[91], the next writer of consequence, frankly accepts the terminology and the new view of classification, though differing on some minor points.
Two lists of lichens, neither of particular note, were published at this time in our country: one by Hugh Davies[92] for Wales, which adheres to the Linnaean system, and the other by Forster[93] of lichens round Tonbridge. Though Forster adopts the genera of Acharius, he includes lichens among algae. A more important publication was S. F. Gray’s[94] Natural Arrangement of British Plants. Gray, who was a druggist in Walsall and afterwards a lecturer on botany in London, was only nominally[95] the author, as it was mainly the work of his son John Edward Gray[96], sometime Keeper of Zoology in the British Museum. Gray was the first to apply the principles of the Natural System of classification to British plants, but the work was opposed by British botanists of his day. The years following the French Revolution and the Napoleonic wars were full of bitter feeling and of prejudice, and anything emanating, as did the Natural System, from France was rejected as unworthy of consideration.
In the Natural Arrangement, Gray followed Acharius in his treatment of lichens; but whereas Acharius, though here and there confusing fungus species with lichens, had been clear-sighted enough to avoid all intermixture of fungus genera, with the exception of one only, the sterile genus Rhizomorpha, Gray had allowed the interpolation of several, such as Hysterium, Xylaria, Hypoxylon, etc. He had also raised many of Acharius’s subgenera and divisions to the rank of genera, thus largely increasing their number. This oversplitting of well-defined genera has somewhat weakened Gray’s work and he has not received from later writers the attention he deserves.