Plants were collected at the flowering stage in Oct (2006) and
Sep (2007), in the Euganean Hills of northeastern Italy. Individuals
were excavated with a clod of their surrounding soil and
transferred to the laboratory. Roots were carefully cleaned
from soil under running water, surface sterilized and sectioned,
to isolate fungal endophytes along the entire root system.
From each section, material was collected for three
parallel purposes described in the subsequent paragraphs:
(a) morphological observations by microscopy; (b) isolation
of culturable internal fungi; (c) molecular analyses of their
identity. For the latter, cylindrical portions were transferred
into 1.5 ml polypropylene conical tubes to be used for DNA extraction
and stored at 20 C.