:Xylariaceae: Daldinia

GENERIC DESCRIPTION

Stromata spherical, depressed-spherical, placentiform, peltate, turbinate, clavate, or cylindrical, sessile, subsessile to definitively stipitate, solitary to aggregated, smooth or with inconspicuous to conspicuous perithecial mounds; surface colored, darkened and dull or blackened and varnished in age; dark, waxy granules immediately beneath surface, with or without KOH-extractable pigments; the tissue between perithecia pithy to woody; the tissue below the perithecial layer composed of alternating zones, the darker zones dark brown, pithy to woody, the lighter zones white, gray, brown to dark brown, pithy, woody, or gelatinous, persistent or disintegrating.

Perithecia obovoid to tubular.

Ostioles inconspicuous, punctate, slightly papillate, or papillate.

Asci eight-spored, cylindrical, stipitate, early deliquescent to persistent, with ascospores arranged uniseriately or partially biseriately, with apical ring discoid, amyloid.

Ascospores light brown, brown, or dark brown, unicellular in both mature and immature states, ellipsoid, inequilateral or nearly equilateral, with narrowly or broadly rounded ends, with straight or slightly sigmoid germ slit spore-length on more convex or, infrequently, less convex side; perispore dehiscent or indehiscent in 10% KOH, smooth; epispore smooth.