Exosporium livistonae Crous & Summerell, in Crous, Summerell, Shivas, Romberg, Mel’nik, Verkley & Groenewald, Persoonia 27: 145 (2011).

Index Fungorum number: IF 560702; Mycobank number: MB 560702; Facesoffungi number: FoF 16037; Fig. 1

Saprophytic from the yellowed and dead leaves of Trachycarpus fortunei. Sexual morph: Not observed. Asexual morph: Colonies on PDA discrete, hairy, brown or white. Mycelium immersed. Stroma usually present, and often very well-developed. Setae and hyphopodia absent. Conidiophores 140–285 × 4–6 µm (x̄= 180 × 4 μm, n = 50), macronematous, mononematous, often caespitose, straight, or flexuous, unbranched, or very rarely branched, mid to dark brown or olivaceous brown, smooth or verruculose. Conidia 30–70 × 4–6 µm (x̄=47 × 5 μm, n=50), usually solitary, short catenate in one species, a crop leurogenous, simple, mostly obclavate, pale to dark brown or olivaceous brown, smooth, verrucose or echinulate, distoseptate, generally with a thick, dark hilum at the base.

Culture characteristics – colonies on PDA reach 7 cm diam. at 25 ℃ after 5 days. Upper view wrinkled, filamentous, entire margin, flat, cloudy, fluffy for aerial hyphae, become gray black with time, dense for aerial hyphae, reverse becomes black.

Material examined – China, Guangdong Province, Guangzhou City, South China Botanical Garden, yellow leaves of the palm (Trachycarpus fortunei), 10 June 2021, G.Y. Xia, (new host record)—living culture in ZHKUCC 24-0793.

GenBank numbers – ITS=PQ060474, LSU=PQ060475.

Note – In the present study one isolate (ZHKUCC 24-0793) obtained from Trachycarpus fortunei clustered together with Exosporium livistonae (CBS 131313=CPC 19357) with 98% ML values. The nucleotide difference between the isolate (ZHKUCC 24-0793) in this study and Exosporium livistonae (CBS 131313=CPC 19357) was 0.01% in LSU (9/780 bases), and 0.04% in ITS (18/430 bases) excluding gaps. Morphologically, the conidia have some differences from Exosporium livistonae (CBS 131313=CPC 19357) and the colour distribution and morphology of the fruiting body of the Exosporium livistonae (CBS 131313=CPC 19357). However, we do not consider these slight differences to introduce this as a new species. Therefore, herein we report Exosporium livistonae as a novel host species on Trachycarpus fortunei from China (Fig. 1).

Figure 1 – Exosporium livistonae (ZHKUCC 24–0793, new host record) a Host photo. b, c Fruiting bodies. d Front and back view of colony at 25 °C on PDA. e, f Germinating spore (100x). h, i, k, l Single spore under 100 magnification. Scale bar: E–J=10um