BACKGROUND Rochefortia is a small taxon of woody plants in the Ehretiaceae (Boraginales) exhibiting coriaceous leaves with cystoliths, small whitish flowers and drupaceous fruits containing four pyrenes. It shares the dioecious sex distribution with its sister group Lepidocordia and can be delimited from the latter (and all other Ehretiaceae) by the presence of thorns. Neotropical Rochefortia i...

Classification is an essential process in science. The creation (and refinement) of taxonomies is basic to many scientific tasks. Activities such as theory formation, law induction, and experimentation undoubtedly rely upon a sound classification of elements, e.g., physical, chemical, biological. More specifically, taxonomic revision can play an important role in scientific discovery. The detec...

The genus Lopadostoma (Xylariaceae, Xylariales) is revised. Most species formerly assigned to Lopadostoma do not belong to the genus. Twelve species are herein recognised, of which two are only known from morphology. Ten species, of which six (L. americanum, L. fagi, L. insulare, L. lechatii, L. meridionale and L. quercicola) are newly described, are characterised by both morphology and DNA phy...

This study provides a taxonomic revision for the Neotropical species of the genus Murdannia. Six species are recognized as native, including a new species and a new combination, while two Asian species are recognized as invasive. We present an identification key, a table summarizing the morphologic differences among the species, a new synonym, six lectotypifications, a distribution map, and des...

Morphological characters within the Ustilago-Sporisorium-Macalpinomyces complex are defined explicitly. The genera Sporisorium and Anthracocystis are emended to reflect morphological synapomorphies. Three new genera, Langdonia, Stollia and Triodiomyces are described based on soral synapomorphies and host classification. The new classification of the Ustilago-Sporisorium-Macalpinomyces complex i...

R. ALEXANDER PYRON, R. GRAHAM REYNOLDS & FRANK T. BURBRINK 1 Dept. of Biological Sciences, The George Washington University, 2023 G St. NW, Washington, D.C. 20052; Email: [email protected] 2Dept. of Organismic and Evolutionary Biology & Museum of Comparative Zoology, Harvard University, 26 Oxford Street, Cambridge, MA 02138; Email: [email protected] 3Dept. of Biology, The Gradua...