Ascobolus Xylophilus redescribed from France with remarks on its taxonomic position

During a collecting trip in the High Pyrenees (France) the second author has collected several fruit bodies of Ascobolus xylophilus Seaver on a log of rotten coniferous wood in a mountain stream. Till then this fungus was only known from the original specimens, collected by Prof. E. Bethel & Dr. F. J. Seaver, September 1910 in the Geneva Creek Canyon, Colorado, U.S.A. (van Brummelen, 1967: 153). As the material of the type specimen is rather scarce and consists of a few very old fruit bodies, from which it was difficult to make a complete description, the species has been redescribed and pictured from the newly collected European material.