Magnolia grandiflora is a medicinal and horticultural plant species in the family Magnoliaceae which is native to North America (Li et al., 2013). Syringa reticulate is a tree in the family Oleaceae which is native to Japan (Green et al., 1995). During autumn 2017, leaf spots were observed on Magnolia grandiflora and Syringa reticulate in an ornamental garden in Hamedan province, Iran. Initial symptoms on M. grandiflora and S. reticulata leaves appeared as irregular, black and necrotic spots, often developing from the tip and sometimes from the edges of the leaves. These lesions slowly grew in size, and appeared long and blackish (Fig. 1). Symptomatic leaves were collected and transferred to the laboratory for further study. In order to identify the causal agent, small pieces were cut from the margin of diseased and healthy tissues of affected leaves. After surface disinfection, the pieces were transferred onto potato dextrose agar (PDA) medium at 27°C in the darkness for seven days. The isolates were transferred to saltwater nutrient agar (SNA) and malt extract agar (MEA) media. For each isolate, the size, colour and shape of 30 pycnidia and conidia, were recorded after 14 days. On PDA, colonies were initially white, gradually becoming greenish to dark green then black, on SNA, colonies were greenish to dark green and on MEA, colonies were grey to black (Fig. 2). Pycnidia with conidia were produced after 14 days. Pycnidia were globose, and brown to black. Conidia were hyaline, one-celled, ovoid to ellipsoid, with a short and thin apical appendage, measuring 9-11 × 5-6 μm (Fig. 3). On the basis of morphological characters, the isolates were identified as Phyllosticta capitalensis. As the cultural and morphological characters of the isolates were very similar, one isolate from each host was selected for molecular analysis. Genomic DNA was extracted as described by Moller et al. (1992). The ITS region was amplified using primers ITS1 and ITS4. A BLAST search using the
