Discosporium
Discosporium Höhn., Z. Gärungsphysiol. 5: 196 (1915) =Chondroplea Kleb., Phytopath. Z. 6: 291 (1933)
Ascomycota, genera incertae sedis
Saprobic or parasitic on the host plant in terrestrial habitat. Sexual morph: undetermined. Asexual morph: Conidiomata dark brown to black, stromatic, scattered to gregarious, immersed, discoid, orbicular to irregular in outline, unilocular or plurilocular, convoluted, glabrous. Ostiole absent, dehiscence by irregular breakdown of upper tissues. Conidiomatal wall composed of thick-walled cells of textura angularis to textura intricata. Conidiophores arising from inner layer cells of locular wall, pale brown to brown, cylindrical to subcylindrical, simple or branched, septate, thick- and rough-walled for most of their length. Conidiogenous cells hyaline or occasionally subhyaline at the base, enteroblastic, annellidic, subcylindrical, integrated or discrete, indeterminate, smooth-walled, with several percurrent proliferations. Conidia hyaline, subglobose to obovoid or napiform, with a slightly truncate base, unicellular, smooth-walled, eguttulate (Nag Raj and DiCosmo 1978; Sutton 1980).
Type species: Discosporium hyalinum (Ellis) Höhn., Z. Gärungsphysiol. 5: 196 (1915)
Notes: Klebahn (1933) introduced Chondroplea Kleb., with C. populea (Sacc. & Briard) Kleb. as type species. Petrak (1957b) noted that C. populea is taxonomically identical to the generic type of Discosporium, and he reduced Chondroplea as a synonym of Discosporium, following priority. Sutton (1980) revised Discosporium and accepted three taxa namely, D. eugeniae (Allesch.) B. Sutton, D. hyalinum (= D. populeum (Sacc.) B. Sutton) and D. tremuloides (Ellis & Everh.) B. Sutton. Three species were added, D. acaciae (Sutton & Davison 1983), D. eucalypti (Sutton & Davison 1983) and D. minutum (Marincowitz et al. 2008). The sexual morph of Discosporium has been assigned to Cenangium Fr. in Leotiomycetes (Hanlin 1997), Cryptodiaporthe Petr. (now Plagiostoma Fuckel) (Sutton 1980; Mejía et al. 2011) and Diplacella Syd. in Sordariomycetes (Maharachchikumbura et al. 2015, 2016). However, none of these connections have been successfully demonstrated in culture. There is no molecular data available for the genus and therefore we retain Discosporium as the legitimate name. Future studies with fresh collections and cultures of Discosporium species are needed.
Distribution: Australia, Austria, Canada, Germany, Hungary, Kenya, Romania, South Africa, UK, USA, (Sutton 1980; Sutton and Davison 1983; Marincowitz et al. 2008).
Discosporium hyalinum (redrawn from Nag Raj and DiCosmo 1978) a Vertical section of conidioma. b Conidia. c Conidiophores, conidiogenous cells and conidia.
Reference:
Li WJ, McKenZie EHC, Liu JK, Bhat DJ, Dai DQ, Caporesi E, Tian Q, Maharachcikumbura SSN, Luo ZL, Shang QJ, Zhang JF, Tangthirasunun N, Karunarathna SC, Xu JC, Hyde KD (2020) Taxonomy and phylogeny of hyaline-spored coelomycetes. Fungal Diversity 100: pages279–801.
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