The recently established monotypic genus Alpinaria comprises A. rhododendri. It occurs on Rhododendron species and is distributed across Europe, India and North America. The genus was previously established to epitypify Cucurbitaria rhododendri and was assigned to Melanommataceae based on multigene phylogenetic analyses. In this study, a fungal taxon growing on unidentified dicotyledonous wood was collected from Shangri La, Yunnan Province, China. Our taxon clustered with Alpinaria in the combined LSU, SSU, ITS and TEF1-α phylogenetic tree based on maximum likelihood and Bayesian analyses. Our collection is characterized by globose, ostiolate ascomata, pseudoparaphyses, cylindrical, bitunicate, fissitunicate asci and 8-spored, ellipsoid and septate ascospores. Morphology and multigene phylogenetic analyses support the identification of our taxon as A. rhododendri, a new geographical record for China.
Congratulations, Vinodhini Thiyagaraja and co-authors!
