Fungalpedia – Note 3121, Mollisia

 

Mollisia (Fr.) P. Karst., Bidrag Kännedom Finlands Natur Folk 19: 15, 189 (1871).

Citation when using this data: Jian Ma et al. 2024 – Fungalpedia.

Index Fungorum, Faceoffungi, MycoBank, GenBank.

Classification: Mollisiaceae, Helotiales, Leotiomycetidae, Leotiomycetes, Pezizomycotina, Ascomycota, Fungi.

Notes: Mollisia was established by Karsten (1871), with M. cinerea as the type species. Index Fungorum (2024) lists 786 species epithets, with M. cinerea being the only asexual helicosporous morph within Mollisia (Fisher and Webster 1983). Mollisia cinerea was initially introduced as Helicodendron giganteum (Glen-Bott 1951) and subsequently synonymized as M. cinerea based on their identical conidial descriptions (Fisher and Webster 1983). Mollisia cinerea was found on submerged twigs of Picea, and dead leaves of Fagus spp. and Quercus spp. in aero-aquatic habitats (Fisher and Webster 1983). The asexual morph of M. cinerea is characterized by having terminally and laterally, long, simple or branched conidiophores, and hyaline to brown, helicoid spores with a proliferation to form secondary conidia (Glen-Bott 1951). The sexual morph of M. cinerea is characterized by obconical apothecia, polygonal or rounded cells excipulum, clavate, 8-spored asci with cylindrical, and unbranched paraphyses, and fusoid, hyaline, and smooth ascospores that are obliquely uniseriateor, and occasionally biseriatemanner (Fisher and Webster 1983).

Type species: Mollisia cinerea (Batsch) P. Karst., Bidrag till Kännedom av Finlands Natur och Folk 19: 189 (1871).

Other accepted species: Species Fungorum – search Mollisia.

Figure 1 – (a) Lambertella tubulosa (redrawn from Abdullah and Webster (1981)), a phialides. b, c Conidia. Scale bars: b = 40 µm, a, c = 20 µm; (b) Helicodendron fuscum (redrawn from Voglmayr and Fisher (1997)), a Conidiophore with attached conidia. b Conidia. Scale bars: a, b = 50 µm; (c) Mollisia gigantea (redrawn from Glen-Bott (1951)). Scale bars: 50 µm; (d) Spirosphaera floriformis (redrawn from Seifert et al. (2011)).

 

References

Fisher P, Webster J. 1983 – The teleomorphs of Helicodendron giganteum and H. paradoxum. Transactions of the British Mycological Society 81(3):656–659.

Glen-Bott JI. 1951 – Helicodendron giganteum n. sp. and other aerial-sporing Hyphomycetes of submerged dead leaves. Transactions of the British Mycological Society 34(3):275–279.

Karsten PA. 1871 – Mycologia fennica: Discomycetes. Ps. 1, vol 19. Finska Litteratur-Sällskapets tryckeri.

 

Entry by

Jian Ma, School of Food and Pharmaceutical Engineering, Guizhou Institute of Technology, Guiyang 550003, P.R. China, Center of Excellence in Fungal Research, Mae Fah Luang University, Chiang Rai 57100, Thailand, School of Science, Mae Fah Luang University, Chiang Rai, 57100, Thailand.

 

Published online 10 September 2026

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