Cordyceps Fr., Observ. mycol. (Havniae) 2: 316 (cancellans) (1818)
MycoBank number: MB 1240; Index Fungorum number: IF 1240; Facesoffungi number: FoF 01317; 180 morphological species (Species Fungorum 2020), 42 species with sequence data.
Type species – Cordyceps militaris (L.) Fr.
Notes – Cordyceps was validly published by Link (1833) and given as the group name by Fries (1818) as Cordylia (Rogers 1954). Cordyceps includes about 564 species (Index Fungorum 2015) and was formally moved to Cordycipitoideae in 2007 (Sung et al. 2007). Sung et al. (2007) moved some species from Cordyceps to several genera including Ophiocordyceps (Ophiocordycipitaceae), Elaphocordyceps current name Tolypocladium (Ophiocordycipitaceae), Metacordyceps (Clavicipitaceae), Claviceps (Clavicipitaceae), Tyrannicordyceps (Clavicipitaceae), Epichloë (Clavicipitaceae), Podostroma (Hypocreaceae) and Podocrea (Hypocreaceae). Kepler et al. (2017) suppressed the names Isaria, Microhilum, Phytocordyceps and Evlachovaea in favour of Cordyceps. The genus infects insects and produces bright, stipitate, fleshy stromata, superficial to embedded perithecia, ascospores which break or do not break into part spores (Sung et al. 2007). The asexual morph of this genus produces evlachovaea-like, isaria-like, lecanicillium-like, mariannaea-like, simplicillium-like phialides or conidia (Sung et al. 2007). A specimen of Cordyceps militaris collected from China which shows the complete sexual and asexual characteristics is illustrated here.
Species
Cordyceps militaris