A new record of Gliocephalotrichum simplex from India

During a survey of interesting and rare fungi infecting economically important plants in the forests of the Western Ghats in India, an uncommon fungal species was isolated from fruits of Terminalia chebula. The fungus has distinctive morphological features such as a whorl of sterile arms subtending penicillate branches bearing yellowish masses of elongated to ellipsoidal conidia. Based on morphological characters and a comparison of sequences of the internal transcribed spacer region of rDNA (ITS1-5.8S-ITS2), the fungus was determined to be Gliocephalotrichum simplex, a species not previously known from India.