The Botryosphaeriales are an order of

sac fungi Ascomycota is a phylum of the kingdom Fungi that, together with the Basidiomycota, forms the subkingdom Dikarya. Its members are commonly known as the sac fungi or ascomycetes. It is the largest phylum of Fungi, with over 64,000 species. The defi ...

(Ascomycetes), placed under class

Dothideomycetes Dothideomycetes is the largest and most diverse class of ascomycete fungi. It comprises 11 orders 90 families, 1300 genera and over 19,000 known species. Traditionally, most of its members were included in the loculoascomycetes, which is not par ...

. Some species are parasites, causing

leaf spot A leaf spot is a limited, discoloured, diseased area of a leaf that is caused by fungal, bacterial or viral plant diseases, or by injuries from nematodes, insects, environmental factors, toxicity or herbicides. These discoloured spots or lesions ...

, plant rot, die-back or

cankers A plant canker is a small area of dead tissue, which grows slowly, often over years. Some cankers are of only minor consequence, but others are ultimately lethal and therefore can have major economic implications for agriculture and horticultur ...

, but they can also be saprophytes or

endophytes An endophyte is an endosymbiont, often a bacterium or fungus, that lives within a plant for at least part of its life cycle without causing apparent disease. Endophytes are ubiquitous and have been found in all species of plants studied to date; h ...

. They occur world-wide on many hosts. The order was originally defined in 2006 to have only one family,

Botryosphaeriaceae The Botryosphaeriaceae are a family of sac fungi (Ascomycetes), which is the type representative of the order Botryosphaeriales. According to a 2008 estimate, the family contains 26 genera and over 1500 species. Members of this order include not ...

, but new taxonomic studies have added at least seven other families.

References

Ascomycota orders Dothideomycetes {{Dothideomycetes-stub