Dermea pruni (Teng) J.W. Groves, Mycologia 43(6): 721. 1952.

Jiang, Ning & Tian, Cheng-Ming, 2019, Re-collection of Dermeaprunus in China, with a description of D. chinensis sp. nov., MycoKeys 50, pp. 79-91 : 79

Dermea pruni (Teng) J.W. Groves, Mycologia 43(6): 721. 1952. Figure 4

Description.

Sexual Asexual morph: see Groves (1952). Asexual morph: conidial fruiting bodies erumpent, gregarious, pulvinate, 0.6-2.3 mm wide, 0.2-0.35 mm high (av. = 1.8 × 0.28 mm, n = 10), yellowish, furfuraceous to glabrous, tearing open irregularly and widely at the top, waxy in consistency, more fresh when moist, usually containing up to 30 more or less lobed cavities. Conidiophores 4-15 × 1.5-2.5 μm, hyaline, aseptate, unbranched, tapering to a slender tip. Conidiogenous cells 3.5-15 × 1.5-2.5 μm, determinate, phialidic, cylindrical, hyaline. Conidia (62 –)75–88(– 95) × (2 –)2.5–3.3(– 3.5) μm, hyaline, fifiform, straight or curved, two-celled. Microconidia absent.

Culture characters.

On MEA at 25 °C colonies grow slowly, reaching 50 mm diameter within 50 d, at first pale yellow, gradually becoming dark brown with scanty aerial mycelium.

Habitat and host range.

On dying stems and branches of Prunus cerasifera f. atropurpurea .

Specimens examined.

CHINA. SHAANXI PROVINCE, Ankang City, Qinling Mountain, 33°26'7"N, 108°26'48"E, 1570 m asl, on branches of Prunus cerasifera f. atropurpurea , N. Jiang & C.M. Tian leg., 23 Jul 2018 (BJFC-S1727, living culture CFCC 53006). CHINA. SHAANXI PROVINCE, Ankang City, Qinling Mountain, 33°26'7"N, 108°26'48"E, 1570 m asl, on branches of Prunus cerasifera f. atropurpurea , N. Jiang & C.M. Tian leg., 23 Jul 2018 (BJFC-S1728, living culture CFCC 53007).

Notes.

Dermea pruni was proposed based on a specimen collected from Prunus branches in Sichuan province, China. However, no living culture or DNA data were available ( Groves 1951). In addition, the asexual Asexual morph was not included in the original description ( Groves 1951). During our fungal collection trip in China, two Dermea specimens were accidentally discovered on a common road tree, Prunus cerasifera f. atropurpurea in Shaanxi province, which borders Sichuan province, the original collection province of the holotype. Asexual fruiting bodies were observed on the whole trees, from stems to branches. However, no sexual asexual morph was found, even though we investigated all Prunus trees along the road. Conidial size was compared among our collections, D. cerasi , D. padi , and D. prunastri , which can distinguish them (Table 2). Considering that our collections and the type specimen (Teng #3352, preserved in the herbarium of the University of Michigan) of D. pruni were collected from the same hosts and from nearby regions ( Groves 1951), our specimens were identified and treated here as D. pruni . However, more detailed taxonomic studies are needed, including DNA extraction from the holotype of D. pruni to compare ITS sequences of our collections and the holotype.