Myriangiales

Ah those tricky words.

We have an old dictionary on an old dictionary stand at work. I passed it today and noticed the call word on top of the page that the previous word-seeker had left open.

The word was myriangiales.

I thought, “What a beautiful word!” and proceeded to read the definition.

myriangiales: An order of fungi (subclass Euascomycetes) having a single ascus in each chamber of the well-developed and often gelatinous stroma (from Webster’s Third New International Dictionary, 1976)

How beautiful indeed. (I suppose even gelatinous would be a pretty word to someone who didn’t know its meaning, who couldn’t call up all the icky images associated with it.)

The above picture shows damage done by one of the species in the order myriangiales, called elsinoe fawcetti, or Citrus Scab.

Even the picture’s kind of pretty from far away.