Phyllocharis Fée, Essai Crypt Écorc. 1: LIX, XCIV, XCIX (1825).
MycoBank number: MB 4062; Index Fungorum number: IF 4062; Facesoffungi number: FoF 08878; one morphologically delimited species (this paper); molecular data not available.
Lichenized on leaves in terrestrial, lowland to montane, tropical to subtropical habitats. Thallus (pseudo-)corticate, pale grey-green, usually subcuticular and sometimes damaging the supporting leaf. Photobiont Cephaleuros. Sexual morph: Ascomata perithecia, prominent, black but largely covered by thallus layer, wart-shaped, carbonaceous, ostiolate. Involucrellum present, weakly carbonized. Excipulum prosoplectenchymatous, brownish. Hamathecium comprising 0.5–0.7 µm wide paraphyses, hyaline, flexuose, unbranched. Asci 8-spored, bitunicate, fissitunicate, obclavate to fusiform, shortly pedicellate, with narrow ocular chamber, non-amyloid. Ascospores irregularly arranged to biseriate, oblong, hyaline, 3-septate, with thin eusepta and rectangular lumina, smooth-walled. Asexual morph: Pycnidia common, immersed to erumpent, visible as black dots. Conidia acrogenous, either macro- or microconidia; macroconidia 3–9-septate, long-filiform, with gelatinous appendages, hyaline; microconidia aseptate, fusiform, small, hyaline.
Chemistry: No secondary substances known.
Type species: Phyllocharis complanata Fée [= Phyllocharis orbicularis (Fr.) S.H. Jiang, Lücking & Sérus. (see below)].
Notes: Although no genuine molecular data are available for Strigula orbicularis, the 3-septate ascospores set it apart from all other foliicolous, subcuticularly growing genera (Jiang et al. 2020b), and the peculiar, filiform macroconidia are unique among the entire family. The genus Phyllocharis is therefore resurrected here to reflect this. The name Phyllocharis Fée has a later homonym, Phyllocharis Diels, a plant genus in the family Lobeliaceae. The latter had been proposed for conservation (van den Brink et al. 1961), but the proposal was not accepted (Rickett 1963). Fée’s name is therefore available.
Species