Cypress canker is widespread throughout New Zealand. Birch (1933) recorded it on Cupressus macrocarpa as Coryneum cardinale, from Auckland, Waikato, and Wairarapa. Fuller and Newhook (1954) assessed damage caused by cypress canker in farm shelter hedges in the Waikato area and suggested the replacement of Cupressus macrocarpa with C. lusitanica var. benthamii, C. torulosa, Chamaecyparis pisifera var. plumosa, Thuja plicata and Cryptomeria japonica. Newhook (1962) stated that the first three of these species of cypress are resistant, not immune, to cypress canker. Weston (1957) discussed the occurrence and severity of damage of cypress canker in plantations throughout New Zealand. Bannister and Orman (1960) recommended the relatively resistant Cupressus lusitanica var. benthamii for planting in areas where climate is suitable for the development of the disease. This disease has been introduced into New Zealand with nursery stock of host plants.

Sequences deposited in GenBank are from the strain IMI 052255, also from Kenya, but Cupressus forbesii (Hesperocyparis forbesii) is given as host in the CABI database. This may represent Lepteutypa cupressi, but is probably not conspecific with isolates of Seiridium cupressi from Australia (Cunnington 2007), South Africa and New Zealand (Barnes et al. 2001). Although Swart (1973) interpreted the high morphological variation of Seiridium on Cupressus only as variants of a single species, Barnes et al. (2001) separated S. cardinale, S. cupressi and S. unicorne as distinct species using histone and tubulin sequences and determined that the major pathogens are S. cardinale and S. cupressi. Cunnington (2007) correlated tubulin sequences with conidial morphology and determined S. cupressi as the common cause of cypress canker in south-eastern Australia. He also maintained that the sexual morph of S. cupressi is Lepteutypa cupressi, and that the sexual morphs of the other Seiridium species are not known. However, there is still no evidence of a direct molecular connection of the African L. cupressi and the Australian S. cupressi and its sexual morph. Unfortunately, noAfrican material of the sexual morph, Lepteutypa cupressi, was included in these analyses, and no histone and tubulin sequences are yet available for the African L. cupressi. For the strainATCC 48158 of S. cupressi originating from New Zealand, ITS as well as histone and tubulin sequences are available. In the phylogenetic analyses of Barnes et al. (2001) and Cunnington (2007), this strain is contained within the S. cupressi clade. However, in our phylogenetic analyses based on ITS (Fig. 1), S. cupressi strain ATCC 48158 is distinct from L. cupressi IMI 052255, indicating that they are not conspecific. If this is the case, it may have the undesirable consequence that the current species concept of S. cupressi is inappropriate, as both S. cupressi and L. cupressi are based on material from the same hosts collected in Kenya. This group therefore requires substantial taxonomic revision, including a representative sampling of well-identified strains as well as additional sequence regions other than ITS-LSU.