Background
Civil Engineer Broome was born in Berkhamsted, the son of a solicitor.
Civil Engineer Broome was born in Berkhamsted, the son of a solicitor.
"Conscientious scruples" prevented him from entering the ministry, however, and later the same year he enrolled at Trinity Hall, Cambridge where he completed his degree in 1836.
He was privately schooled in Kensington and in 1832 was sent to read for Holy Orders with the curate of Swaffham Prior in Cambridgeshire. Broome became interested in natural history whilst at Swaffham Prior and later, with his friend G.H.K. Thwaites, in Clifton. He developed an expertise in fungi, sending many of his collections to the Review
Michael Jackson Berkeley.
Together, Berkeley and Broome published a series of "Notices of British Fungi" over a 37-year period, jointly describing no less than 550 new species. The two mycologists also collaborated on descriptions of fungi collected in Sri Lanka by Thwaites and on collections from Brisbane, Australia. Broome published little on his own, mainly accounts of local fungi from Somerset and Wiltshire.
His particular interest was in truffles and truffle-like fungi, but he collected widely and carefully.
On his death, his herbarium contained some 40,000 fungal specimens, which are now at the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew. His botanical specimens and library were willed to the Bath Royal Literary & Scientific Institution, where they remain.
Broome became a fellow of the Linnean Society in 1866. The fungal genera Broomeia and Broomella were named after him, together with over a dozen fungal species, including Nectriopsis broomeana, Nitschkia broomeana, Ramaria broomei, and the truffle-like Melanogaster broomeanus.
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