Phyllactinia fraxinicola, another Asian fungal pathogen on Fraxinus excelsior (common ash) introduced to Europe?

Since the mid-nineties Phyllactinia fraxini has become frequent in Germany. This species has hitherto been characterized by having straight conidiophore foot cells. However, we found that recent collections from Germany have conidiophores with sinuated and twisted foot cells. So far sinuated foot cells were only known from the related P. fraxinicola , another species with Eastern Asian origin. We thus hypothesized that recent collections from Germany belong to P. fraxinicola which might have been introduced to Europe. Using morphological and molecular rDNA data we found that no introduction took place and that there is only P. fraxini in Germany. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]