Description
Fruit bodies (ascocarps) are cylindrical or flattened with dimensions of 3–8 centimetres (1.2–3.1 in) tall × 2–8 mm thick. The erect ascocarps are often twisted or bent, and typically sparsely branched, often in a shape resembling an antler's horns. Specimens found earlier in the season, in spring, may be covered completely in asexual spores (conidia), which manifests itself as a white to grayish powdery deposit. Later in the season, mature ascocarps are charcoal-black, and have minute pimple-like bumps called perithecia on the surface. These are minute rounded spore bearing structures with a tiny holes, or ostioles, for the release of sexual spores (ascospores). The perithecia are embedded in the flesh of the ascocarp, the stroma, which is tough, elastic, and white. Within the perithecia, the asci are 100 × 8 µm.
Ascospores are kidney-shaped, black, and smooth, with dimensions of 10–14 × 4–6 µm. The asexual spores (mitospores) are ellipsoid in shape, smooth, and hyaline.
Read more about this topic: Xylaria Hypoxylon
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“The next Augustan age will dawn on the other side of the Atlantic. There will, perhaps, be a Thucydides at Boston, a Xenophon at New York, and, in time, a Virgil at Mexico, and a Newton at Peru. At last, some curious traveller from Lima will visit England and give a description of the ruins of St Paul’s, like the editions of Balbec and Palmyra.”
—Horace Walpole (1717–1797)