Colletotrichum panacicola isolates were obtained from anthracnose lesions of Korean ginseng and compared with four Colletotrichum species in morphology, molecular phylogeny and pathogenicity. Based on morphological characteristics, C. panacicola was easily distinguished from Colletotrichum gloeosporioides but not from Colletotrichum higginsianum, Colletotrichum destructivum and Colletotrichum coccodes. A phylogenetic tree generated from ribosomal DNA-internal transcribed spacer sequences revealed that C. panacicola is remarkably distinguished from C. gloeosporioides and C. coccodes but not from C. higginsianum and C. destructivum. However, molecular sequence analysis of three combined genes (actin + elongation factor-1α + glutamine synthatase) provided sufficient variability to distinguish C. panacicola from other Colletotrichum species. Pathogencity tests showed that C. panacicola is pathogenic to Korean ginseng but not to other plants. These results suggest that C. panacicola is an independent taxon distin-zguishable from C. gloeosporioides and other morphologically similar Colletotrichum species.