As the number of livestock increased in the years following English colonisation of Australia in 1788, the need for nutritious fodder, including lucerne (Medicago sativa), grew. One of the first diseases found on lucerne was a leaf spot which was collected in 1879 by George Bancroft, a physician and naturalist, in a suburb of Brisbane. The Queensland Government Botanist Frederick Manson Bailey sent a specimen to the prominent English mycologists Miles Joseph Berkeley and Christopher Edmund Broome who in 1883 formally described and named the fungus Sphaerella destructiva. That fungus is now known as Pseudopeziza medicaginis, the causal agent of common leaf spot of lucerne. It was one of over 300 fungi that were included in a 1880 paper co-written by the Reverend Julian Tenison-Woods and Frederick Bailey. At that time almost all of these fungi which had been collected in Australia were identified by overseas mycologists, particularly Berkeley and Broome. It can be argued that their 1880 paper was the first significant one published in Australia which focussed on fungi. Just a decade or so later Australian scientists, in particular Daniel McAlpine, were describing new fungal taxa on their own.

1788 年英国殖民澳大利亚后的几年里，随着牲畜数量的增加，对包括苜蓿 (Medicago sativa) 在内的营养饲料的需求也随之增长。苜蓿上最早发现的疾病之一是叶斑病，由医生兼博物学家乔治·班克罗夫特 (George Bancroft) 于 1879 年在布里斯班郊区采集。昆士兰州政府植物学家弗雷德里克·曼森·贝利 (Frederick Manson Bailey) 将一份标本寄给了著名的英国真菌学家迈尔斯·约瑟夫·伯克利 (Miles Joseph Berkeley) 和克里斯托弗·埃德蒙·布鲁姆 (Christopher Edmund Broome)，他们于 1883 年正式描述了这种真菌并将其命名为 Sphaerella destructiva。这种真菌现在被称为 Pseudopeziza medicaginis，是苜蓿常见叶斑病的病原体。它是 1880 年朱利安·泰尼森-伍兹牧师 (Reverend Julian Tenison-Woods) 和弗雷德里克·贝利 (Frederick Bailey) 共同撰写的一篇论文中包含的 300 多种真菌之一。当时在澳大利亚收集的几乎所有这些真菌都被海外真菌学家鉴定，特别是伯克利和布鲁姆。可以说，他们 1880 年发表的论文是澳大利亚发表的第一篇关注真菌的重要论文。大约十年后，澳大利亚科学家，特别是丹尼尔·麦卡尔平，就自己描述了新的真菌类群。