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Foliicolous fungi of Silent ValleyHosagoudar & RijuPrefaceOne of the authors (VBH), after completing the work on diseases of monocot crops and weeds ofSatara (Chavan & Hosagoudar 1984, 1985), joined Botanical Survey of India, Southern Circle, Coimbatorein the project entitled, Long Term Environmental and Ecological impacts on the multi-purpose River Valleyprojects of Idukki Silent Valley with the assignment of the work on “Foliicolous Fungi of Idukki and SilentValley Hydroelectric Project Area”. However, the work could proceed with Idukki hydroelectric project areaby keeping the Silent Valley in silence. Though the thirst and thrust of Silent Valley fungi was hibernating inmind, it became possible to achieve it only after the sanctioning of the Mycorrhizal project by the Ministryof Environment and Forests, New Delhi. The senior author (VBH) visited the area only once but the teammembers made the collections available and the present work is the outcome of it.This work, a result of the foliicolous fungal collections made in the Silent Valley National Park, Palghat,Kerala, since 1985, resulted in recording 139 fungal taxa belonging to 30 fungal genera: Acremoniula (1),Acrodictys (1), Amazonia (3), Aphanopeltis (1), Armatella (4), Asteridiella (12), Asterina (32), Asterostomella(2), Asterostomula (1), Balladyna (2), Didymopsorella (1), Diplococcium (1), Dysrhynchis (1), Echidnodella(1), Endophyllum (1), Eupelte (1), Irenopsis (1), Leptosphaerulina (1), Meliola (47), Meliolina (1), Oidium (1),Palawaniella (1), Phakopsora (1), Prataprajella (1), Prillieuxina (1), Puccinia (1), Sarcinella (3), Schiffnerula(4), Spiropes (2) and Teratosperma (1), infected 138 plants belonging to 55 host families. The descriptionof all these taxa are provided with illustrations. This area is the type locality for several fungal taxa.This would not have been possible without the permission of Forest Department, Governmentof Kerala and the financial support of Department of Environment and Forests, New Delhi. We gratefullyacknowledge Dr. B. Shivaraju, Additional Chief Conservator of Forests, for his consistant interest in theprogress of our work. Dr. P.G. Latha, Director and Dr. E. Santhosh Kumar, JNTBGRI are acknowledged herefor the facilities and the identification of plants. Our team members, Dr. Jacob Thomas, Dr. P.P. RajeshKumar, Messrs. S.S. Shaji, P.J. Robin and Jayakumar are remembered here—Authors3704Journal of Threatened Taxa | www.threatenedtaxa.org | 05 March 2013 | 5(3): 3701–3788