The genus Xylaria contains about 100 species of cosmopolitan fungi.

Xylaria hypoxylon is a species of fungus in the genus Xylaria.

Xylaria (Sphaeriales, Xylariaceae) from Cerro de la Neblina, Venezuela.

Two of the common species of the genus are Xylaria hypoxylon and Xylaria polymorpha.

Perithecia are also found in Xylaria (Dead Man's Fingers, Candle Snuff) and Nectria.

What is unusual about Physisporinus and Xylaria is that they gradually degrade the cell walls of the wood they infect—thinning them rather than destroying them completely.

Xylaria hypoxylon was first described by Carl Linnaeus in 1745, and then later mentioned by him in his Species Plantarum II.

A decade later, Berkeley circumscribed the genus Glaziella to contain a specimen collected in Brazil, apparently forgetting that he had earlier named it Xylaria aurantiaca.

The type species Glaziella vesiculosa, originally collected in Cuba, was referred to the genus Xylaria by Miles Joseph Berkeley and Moses Ashley Curtis in 1869.

Several ascomycetes of the genus Xylaria colonize the nests of leafcutter ants and other fungus-growing ants of the tribe Attini, and the fungal gardens of termites (Isoptera).

Later, the Dryad's Saddle and Oyster Mushroom appear to have become dominant, and the Xylaria may have disappeared. (4) In 1994 rectangular areas were cut out of the turf around the swings and the climbing frame.

At the 1995 AGM Professor Whalley who spoke on Xylaria and showed a slide of Xylaria carpophila growing on old beech mast, so off we set next day and sure enough there they were quite widespread under the very old beech trees.