[4] They generally have a sexual morph that has a byssoid (wispy, cottony or teased wool appearance) stromata which is well-developed or scant and white to brown or dark-brown.
The hamathecium (i.e., all of the fungal hyphae or other tissues between asci) consists of numerous reticulate, filiform, septate and branched pseudoparaphyses.
[4] Genus Podonectria was introduced by Petch,[1] to accommodate species of Ophionectria (in the Nectriaceae family), which are parasitic on scale insects and have thick-walled asci, long, multiseptate ascospores, and a tetracrium-like conidial stage.
Höhn, was initially found to be the type specimen of the asexual morph Tetracrium aurantii Henn.
Dingley in 1954 from scale insects in New Zealand,[5] they were later followed by a new fungus Podonectria tenuispora Dennis collected from Lepidosaphes ulmi (Linnaeus) found on Calluna vulgaris (L.) Hull.
[7] Subsequently, Rossman transferred species Ophionectria coccorum Petch, associated with Fiorinia juniperi Kuwana, and also Lasiosphaeria larvaespora Cooke & Massee on an undetermined scale insect also to Podonectria, viz.
[9] However, Podonectria bambusicola was excluded because of its occurrence on living leaves of bamboo rather than scale insects and remained an unclassified loculoascomycete (class of fungi with bitunicate Ascomycota).
[6] A later examination of the type specimen of Trichonectria bambusicola further revealed that this was a synonym of Uredinophila erinaceae (Rehm) Rossman.
[10] The genus Podonectria was characterized by having fleshy, white to brown, uninoculated ascomata with bitunicate asci and long, multiseptated ascospores and also being associated with scale insects.
[6] Spatafora et al. transferred the previously reported species Podonectria cicadellidicola Kobayasi & Shimizu and Podonectria citrina Kobayasi & Shimizu to genus Ophiocordyceps (family Ophiocordycipitaceae, Order Hypocreales),[11] supported by the previous phylogenetic analyses presented in Quandt et al in 2014.