Colletotrichum boehmeriae Sawada, Hakubutsu Gakkwai Kwaiho (Trans. Nat. Hist. Soc. Formosa) 17: 2. 1914.
Notes: Sawada (1922) provided an English translation of his original description. This species was described as a stem pathogen of Boehmeria nivea, and remains in use in this sense (e.g. Li & Ma 1993). Wang et al. (2010) cite several GenBank accessions from isolates they identify as C. gloeosporioides that cause severe disease of Boehmeria. Based on a comparison of the GenBank data with our ITS gene tree, these and other isolates from the same host deposited by the same authors (GQ120479-GQ120499), appear to represent three different taxa within the C. gloeosporioides complex--C. gloeosporioides s. str., C. aotearoa, and C. fructicola. Isolates representative of all three taxa are reportedly pathogenic on Boehmeria (Wang et al. 2010). The genetic relationship of these fungi needs to be confirmed using additional genes.
Colletotrichum camelliae Massee, Bull. Misc. Inform. Kew. 1899: 91. 1899.
Notes: Colletotrichum camelliae was described by Massee (in Willis 1899) from the living leaves of tea (Camellia sinensis) from Sri Lanka. It was placed in synonymy with C. gloeosporioides by von Arx (1957). Although not listed by Hyde et al. (2009), the name is widely used in the trade and semi-popular literature as the causal agent of the brown blight disease of tea (e.g. Sosa de Castro et al. 2001, Muraleedharan & Baby 2007).
We have been unable to sample Colletotrichum isolates from tea with typical brown blight symptoms. There are four GenBank accessions of Colletotrichum from tea, two from China (EU732732, FJ515007), one from Japan (AB218993), and another from Iran (AB548281), referred variously to C. camelliae, C. crassipes and C. gloeosporioides. Although ITS sequences only are available for these geographically widespread isolates, the DNA sequence of the Iranian isolate appears to match C. gloeosporioides s. str., while those from the other three isolates are all very similar to each other. The ITS sequence from these isolates matches that of CBS 232.79, from tea shoots from Java (GenBank JX009429). GAPDH and ITS sequences from CBS 232.79 (GenBank JX009417, JX009429) place this isolate in C. fructicola. Note that CBS 571.88, isolated from tea from China and deposited as Glomerella cingulata, is a Colletotrichum sp. outside C. gloeosporioides s. lat., based on ITS sequences (GenBank JX009424).
We tested the pathogenicity of CBS 232.79 and isolates of G. cingulata "f. sp. camelliae" (see below) using detached tea leaves and found that only the G. cingulata "f. sp. camelliae" isolates were strong pathogens (unpubl. data).
The genetic relationship between the pathogen of ornamental Camellia (here referred to G. cingulata "f. sp. camelliae"), isolates from tea with DNA sequence data in GenBank, and isolates associated with brown blight symptoms of tea remain unresolved. Additional isolates with known pathogenicity, collected from typical brown blight symptoms from the field, are required to determine whether or not there are two distinct pathogens of Camellia, one of tea, the other of ornamental varieties.
Other Colletotrichum species reported from tea include C. "theae-sinensis", an invalid recombination of...