The Garden filled his position; it was later discovered that Murrill had a kidney condition and was actually in a rural French hospital during these eight months, unable to send word back to his wife or the NYBG.

Heartbroken and professionally dissatisfied, he then returned to his home state of Virginia to live in a log cabin, financially and mentally troubled.

[1][2][3][4][5] Little was known about Murrill’s whereabouts until, in 1926, George F Weber, a mycologist and plant pathologist from University of Florida, was visiting a Gainesville resort called the Tin Can Tourist Camp along with his wife.

In the recreation hall, they came across an unkempt and haggard, yet “tall, robust, dignified, pleasant stranger providing a piano concert for the transient tourists”.

Having recovered, Murrill found that it was now the peak of the Florida mushroom season, and asked Weber for some collecting supplies, a desk, and a microscope.

Weber set Murrill up with a permanent desk and research space in the only spot he could find—a landing on a stairway near the University Herbarium.

[1][2][5] Murrill began collecting all over the campus and surrounding areas for the next 34 years of his life, describing many new species of fungi, of which 700 type-collections are deposited in the University of Florida Institute for Food and Agricultural Science’s Fungal Herbarium (FLAS).

He would rarely return home during this time, but would work late into the evening, then fall asleep on a couch in the student union.

William Alphonso Murrill died at the age of 88 on December 25, 1957, and along with him, the last surviving member of the early American Mycological Society.