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Electronic Flora of South Australia Genus Fact Sheet

Genus EUPTILOTA Kützing 1847: 36

Phylum Rhodophyta – Order Ceramiales – Family Ceramiaceae – Tribe Ptiloteae

Thallus erect, pinnate, complanately and densely branched for 4 or 5 orders, laterals alternate, densely corticated from close to apices, branches slightly compressed; holdfast rhizoidal, usually conical. Structure. Apical axial filament with oblique alternating cross walls, cutting off alternate, distichous laterals which themselves branch almost immediately or later, with cortication commencing close to apices or 10–15 cells below terminal cells of ecorticate apices, becoming dense, pseudoparenchymatous and obscuring the axial cells, outer cells small and isodiametric; older branches with rhizoidal filaments around the axial cells. Cells uninucleate.

Reproduction: Gametophytes dioecious. Carpogonial branches 4-celled, borne on a supporting cell on subapical cells of ecorticate laterals, probably with other sterile periaxial cells. Carposporophytes at the apex of short lateral branches, with a gonimolobe surrounded by an involucre of tapering branchlets. Spermatangia in dense clusters on cells of pinnules.

Tetrasporangia borne on short 1–3-celled pedicels on the outer cortex of the laterals, or laterally or terminally on the pinnules, sessile, tetrahedrally divided.

Type species: E. formosissima (Montagne) Kützing 1847: 36.

Taxonomic notes: A genus of perhaps 4 species, the type and E. mooreana Lindauer (1949, p. 391) from New Zealand, E. articulata from southern Australia (and Japan and India?) and E. fergusonii Cotton and E. pappeana Kützing (see Silva et al. 1996, p. 409.) from the northern and western Indian Pacific Ocean respectively. Detailed comparisons of E. articulata with the type species are needed. The differences in apical structure and tetrasporangia arrangement may indicate that E. articulata should be placed in a separate genus.

References:

KÜTZING, F.T. (1847). Diagnosen and Bemerkungen zu neuen oder kritischen Algen. Bot. Zeit. 5, 1–5, 22–25, 33–38, 52–55, 164–167, 177–180, 193–198, 219–223.

LINDAUER, V.W. (1949). Notes on marine algae of New Zealand. I. Pacif. Sci. 3, 340–352.

SILVA, P.C., BASSON, P.W. & MOE, R.L. (1996). Catalogue of the Benthic Marine Algae of the Indian Ocean. (University of California Press: Berkeley, Los Angeles & London.)

The Marine Benthic Flora of Southern Australia Part IIIC complete list of references.

Author: H.B.S. Womersley

Publication: Womersley, H.B.S. (24 December, 1998)
The Marine Benthic Flora of Southern Australia
Rhodophyta. Part IIIC. Ceramiales – Ceramiaceae, Dasyaceae
©State Herbarium of South Australia, Government of South Australia


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