Before I became a mycologist, I knew Beatrix Potter as the author of some of my favourite childhood books. It was only years later that I learned she was also a serious student of fungi.

The discovery delighted me, but also surprised me. Delighted because one of my childhood heroes had suddenly become a scientific one too. Surprised because mushrooms barely feature in her stories and because I had thought there was something of a contradiction between the imagination of a children’s author and the meticulous observation required of a mycologist.

But the more I learned about Potter’s work, the more obvious it became that making sense of fungi requires both imagination and the patience to look closely.

This year marks 160 years since Potter’s birth. She produced more than 250 paintings and drawings of fungi at a time when these organisms were still poorly understood. Decades before they would be recognised as a kingdom of life distinct from plants, she was documenting them with remarkable accuracy. Many were inspired by specimens collected in the Lake District and Scottish Highlands, landscapes that would later shape both her conservation work and her stories.

Her illustrations remain beautiful works of art, but they also show how the best........

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