Lizonia (Ces. & De Not.) De Not., Hedwigia 4: 23 (1863) [1865].
≡ Cucurbitaria subgen. Lizonia Ces. & De Not., Comm. Soc. crittog. Ital. 1(fasc. 4): 215 (1863).
MycoBank number: MB 2902; Index Fungorum number: IF 2902; Facesoffungi number: FoF 08271; 16 morphological species (Species Fungorum 2020), 1 species with molecular data.
Type species – Lizonia empirigonia (Ces. & De Not.) De Not.
Notes – De Notaris (Cesati & De Notaris 1863) raised the subgenus Cucurbitaria typified by Cucurbitaria empirigonia to generic level with Lizonia empirigonia as the type species. Lizonia was placed in different families by various authors based on its morphology (Cesati & De Notaris 1863, Hansford 1946, von Arx & Müller 1975, Döbbeler 1978, Barr 1987a, Eriksson & Hawksworth 1993). Phylogenetic analyses in Stenroos et al. (2010) showed that L. sexangularis clustered with Didymella within Pleosporales with good support. Lizonia shares common characters with several genera in Pleosporales such as parasitic, superficial, globose to subglobose, black ascomata, lacking setae, bitunicate asci, pseudoparaphyses and septate, hyaline to coloured ascospores, but it differs in its bryophilous habit. Boonmee et al. (2017) placed it in the new family Lizoniaceae.
Species