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Electronic Flora of South Australia Genus Fact Sheet
Phylum Rhodophyta – Class Florideophyceae – Order Gigartinales – Family Sarcodiaceae
Thallus strongly compressed, subdichotomously to irregularly and complanately branched, with rounded axils and apices, moderately firm. Structure multiaxial, with a fairly dense filamentous medulla with outer stellate cells and a cortex of ovoid cells, smaller outwardly with short anticlinal filaments.
Reproduction: Sexual thalli usually dioecious. Carpogonial branches 3-celled, single or in pairs on inner cortical (supporting) cells, with an adjacent cortical cell becoming an auxiliary cell, connected by a short filament from the hypogynous cell. Carposporophyte with a basal reticulum of partly fused cells with erect, branched, gonimoblast filaments producing short terminal chains of carposporangia. Cystocarps protuberant, basally constricted, ostiolate with a thick pericarp. Spermatangia formed in surface sori.
Tetrasporophyte with nemathecia of tetrasporangia developed between anticlinal filaments of the outer cortex, zonately divided.
Life history triphasic with isomorphic gametophytes and tetrasporophytes.
Type species: S. montagneana (Hooker & Harvey) J. Agardh 1852: 623.
Taxonomic notes: A genus of about 5 species, from the Southern Hemisphere and Japan. The type species has been described by Rasmussen (1964).
References:
AGARDH, J.G. (1852). Species Genera et Ordines Algarum. Vol. 2, Part 2, pp. 337–720. (Gleerup: Lund.)
RASMUSSEN, R.A. (1964). The structure and reproduction of Sarcodia montagneana (Rhodophyta). Phycologia 4, 1–7.
The Marine Benthic Flora of Southern Australia Part IIIA complete list of references.
Publication:
Womersley, H.B.S. (14 January, 1994)
The Marine Benthic Flora of Southern Australia
Rhodophyta. Part IIIA, Bangiophyceae and Florideophyceae (to Gigartinales)
Reproduced with permission from The Marine Benthic Flora of Southern Australia Part IIIA 1994, by H.B.S. Womersley. Australian Biological Resources Study, Canberra. Copyright Commonwealth of Australia.
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