GENERIC DESCRIPTION

Stromata effused-pulvinate, pulvinate, discoid, occasionally applanate, superficial or partially embedded in host tissue, gregarious, solitary or confluent, with sloped or steep margins, unipartite; surface whitish, gray, or grayish brown when young, at length dark brown, blackish brown, or black; mature stromata lacking KOH-extractable pigments, plane or with inconspicuous to conspicuous perithecial mounds; carbonaceous tissue immediately beneath surface; tissue between perithecia either carbonaceous and persistent or whitish, soft, becoming grayish brown, and often disintegrated with age, composed of fungal tissue, host tissue, or both; tissue beneath perithecia inconspicuous or conspicuous, composed of fungal tissue, host tissue, or both.

Perithecia spherical, obovoid, monostichous, with carbonaceous stromatal material surrounding individual perithecia when aged in some taxa.

Ostioles higher than stromatal surface and with openings slightly papillate, papillate, or coarsely papillate, with or without encircling disc.

Asci eight-spored, cylindrical, short- or long-stipitate, persistent, with apical ring urn-shaped, inverted hat-shaped, cuneate, or, less frequently, discoid, amyloid or dextrinoid in Melzer's iodine reagent.

Ascospores pale brown, light brown, brown, dark brown, or blackish brown, bicellular in immature ascospores and becoming unicellular in mature ascospores, ellipsoidal, cylindrical, or fusoid, inequilateral, slightly inequilateral, or nearly equilateral, with acute, narrowly rounded, or broadly rounded ends, with straight, conspicuous or inconspicuous germ slit spore-length to much less than spore-length; perispore indehiscent in 10% KOH; epispore smooth or striate in two taxa.