Type: Sooty Moulds and Similar Fungi; Description: Subiculum superficial, glistening, irregularly thickened, spongy, rusty brown to blackish brown; on bark of trunks and branches. Mycelium composed of brown, septate, generally smooth, straight or curved moniliform hyphae, up to 30 μm wide, which taper toward their distal ends. Conidia ellipsoidal to subcylindrical, straight or slightly curved, 3-septate, 27–43 × 10–14 μm, smooth, dark brown. Capnophialophora synanamorph. Conidia ellipsoidal to subglobose, 1.4–2 × 1.5–1.9 μm, hyaline.

Distribution: Mid Canterbury.; 1st Record: Hughes (1966).

Significance: None.; Host(s): Nothofagus fusca.

On bark of Nothofagus fusca, mixed with other sooty moulds, (1, 2) Woolshed Hill, Hawdon Valley, Canterbury, 16.V.1963, PDD 24945 (type) (DAOM 97302a), DAOM 97301a; (3) Granville Forest, Orwell Creek, Ahaura, Westland, 2.IV.1963, DAOM 97299a.

Subicula are spongy, blackish brown to dark rusty brown, glistening, irregular, with the shape and surface depending to a large extent on the configuration of the substrate; they bear sparse synnemata capped by a sticky head of conidia. This species has been seen only as one of a mixture of three or four sooty moulds growing together. The mycelium is brown, composed of anastomosing, branched, septate, strongly constricted hyphae which taper toward their distal ends; the hyphae are straight or curved, or geniculate at the point of the right ¬angled branching. The cell walls are coarsely roughened at the distal ends of the hyphae but smooth elsewhere. The cells of the vegetative hyphae are about as broad as they are long, sometimes broader, some¬times longer, being barrel-shaped with curved outer wall and flat end walls; older basal cells are up to 30 µm wide and the younger distal cells may be as narrow as 5.5 µm, the tapering being gradual but characteristic.
Capnocybe synnemata are scattered, up to 2.5 mm high, more or less conical or narrowly conical and up to 1 mm wide at the spongy base. Toward the apex they are composed of a single, compact, cylindri¬cal or tapered part up to 150 µm wide, of variable length, and terminating in a more or less subspherical head of conidia up to 400 µm wide; this cylindrical part bears short, downwardly directed, roughened hyphal hairs below, but is glabrous above. The basal part of the synnema is composed of an outer spongy tangle of frequently branched roughened hyphae and toward the inside these merge with a core of loosely com¬pacted or fasciculate smooth hyphae which show sparse parallel branching and numerous anastomoses. The basal internal hyphae are com¬posed of large, globose, to ellipsoidal to pyriform cells up to 35 µm wide. Toward the apex the fasciculate synnematous hyphae are more closely compacted, gradually tapering (to 6 µm), and the cells are progressively paler and more or less ellipsoidal. At their ends the synnematous hyphae are repeatedly branched in a penicillate manner and the terminal cells function as sympodulae. These are more or less ellipsoidal, 9.0-18.0 µm long, 6.0-7.2 µm wide, and at maturity bear up to five denticulate conidium scars round the apex. After producing one or more conidia a sympodula may produce one and sometimes two sympodulae which sporulate in the usual manner; by a repetition of this budding a linear series of up to five cells may develop and these are usually all sympodulae, but occa¬sional cells are sterile.
Sympodioconidia, at maturity, are ellipsoidal or subcylindrical, straight or slightly curved, 3-septate (rarely 2-septate), rounded at both ends, dark brown, thick-walled but with a thin and paler apical area, exter¬nally smooth with some slight internal roughening which occasionally shows through to the outside, 27.0-43.0 x 10.0-13.7 µm, mostly 36-40 µm long. The basal cell may bear the sear on a short denticle, otherwise the scar is inconspicuous; the basal cell is sometimes slightly tapered. There are usually no constrictions at the septa except in conidia which have germinated to produce a hypha or phialides. Capnophialophora phialides are scanty on mycelial hyphae and are occasionally produced directly on conidia and on germinal hyphae arising from conidia. They are more or less subspherical with a truncated base, pale brown to brown, coarsely roughened, and bear a single pale brown collarette which is ellipsoidal, closed when young, and finally with an irregular opening at the paler and subhyaline distal end. There is a deep constriction between the collarette and the phialide cell, the junction being only 1.8-2.0 µm wide. The phialide cells are 5.5-9.0 µm long and 5.0-7.2 µm wide and the collarettes 3.6-5.4 µm long and 2.5-4.5 µm wide. Phialospores observed within the collarettes are broadly ellipsoidal to subglobose, hyaline, and measure ca. 1.4-2.0 µm long and 1.0-1.9 µm wide.
Perithecia of at least two species have been found associated with this Capnocybe and free ascospores may bear the C. novae-zelandiae kind of phialide. However, the collections are mixed and it is hazardous to suggest either of them as the possible perfect state.