Sept.. 1016.1 T HEMMr—niE-IlACK DISh'ASK OF PAl/LOW'NfA. 311 



Unlike the i^ycnosporcs, the ascosporcs germinate readily in pure 

 water. Placed in a drop of water or nutrient media, the as- 

 cosporcs swell a little at first, keeping their original allantoid 

 form, and then germinate within 20-24 hours in the room 

 temperature, throwing out one or two germ-tubes from the ends 

 of the spore. In the case of the present fungus, the germinating 

 spores are not divided into two cells. The two celled ascospores 

 at the time of germination were observed by Brefeld (1891)^^^ 

 in the case of germination of Valsa ceratophora Tul. and by 

 myself recently in the case of germination of Valsa japonica 

 MiYABE et Hemmi/^^ 



Systematic Position and Nomenclature of the Fungus. 



From the morphological characters, we may easily recognize 

 our fungus to be a species of Valsa. The genus Valsa was first 

 described by Fries (1849) ;'-^ and then Nitschke (1867),'-'-* who 

 made a new family Valsaceae out of it, studied the genus 

 exhaustively in his work, " Pyrenomjxetes Germanici." In 

 Engler and Prantl's " Die naturlichen Pflanzenfamilien," 

 LiNDAU (1897)*^^^ divided the genus into ten subgenera. Most of 

 these subgenera were founded by Nitschke and endorsed by 

 Winter (1887)^'*'^ and Schroter (1908).^"^ In Saccardo's 

 Sjdloge Fungorum (1882),'-''^ only two subgenera, Eur aha and 

 Leucostoma, are treated as belonging to this genus and all 

 other subgenera were raised to independent genera. On the 

 ground of the morphological characters of the stromata, I have 

 come to the conclusion that the present fungus is a species of 

 Euvalsa. Nitschke divided the Euvalsa further into 2 groups, 

 Monostichae and Circinatae, and the present fungus belongs to 

 the latter, which corresponds to Macrosporae in Saccardo's 

 system. 



Up to the present time, there are no species of Valsa known 

 to be parasitic on the stem of Paulownia tomentosa. All the 

 known species of Valsa, which belong to the same subgenus, 

 Euvalsa — Circinatae, do not correspond exactly to the characters 

 of the present fungus. We consider, therefore, that the fungus In 

 question is new to science, and the following diagnosis is given. 



