Morphological characteristics and phylogenetic analyses revealed four new wood-inhabiting species of Botryobasidium (Cantharellales, Basidiomycota) from East China

Four new species of Botryobasidium, B. fujianensis, B. fusisporellum, B. subconiferarum and B. macrosporum, are described from east China based on morphological characteristics and phylogenetic analyses using the combined dataset of ITS + nLSU sequences. Botryobasidium fujianensis is characterised by a hypochnoid, floccose to cottony, white to greyish-white hymenial surface, a monomitic hyphal system with simple septa, the presence of tubular cystidioid, barrel-shaped basidia with four or six sterigmata and pip-shaped basidiospores measuring 6.0–7.9 × 2.3–3.4 μm; B. fusisporellum is characterised by a hypochnoid, floccose to cottony, white to greyish-white hymenial surface, a monomitic hyphal system with simple septa, the presence of tubular cystidioid, long barrel-shaped basidia with two or four sterigmata and fusiform basidiospores measuring 5.3–6.5 × 2.3–3.0 μm; B. subconiferarum is characterised by a hypochnoid, floccose, white to greyish-white hymenial surface, a monomitic hyphal system with simple septa, the presence of tubular cystidioid, slightly barrel-shaped basidia with four sterigmata, subcylindrical conidiophores and pip-shaped basidiospores measuring 6.2–8.6 × 2.3–3.7 μm; B. macrosporum is characterised by a hypochnoid, floccose, white to cream hymenial surface, a monomitic hyphal system with simple septa, the presence of tubular cystidioid, slightly barrel-shaped basidia with four to six sterigmata and fusiform basidiospores measuring 9.4–11.0 × 4.8–5.9 μm.

The discovery of these four new species in east China expands the known global diversity of Botryobasidium and provides additional morphological and molecular data for the genus.