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154
THE MARINE ALGÆ OF NEW ENGLAND.
Staten Island; Newport, R. I., Bailey; dredged off Napatree Point, R. I., Prof. Eaton;
Gay Head, in eight or ten fathoms; and common from Nahant northward.
Together with Delesseria sinuosa, this species forms the bulk of the membranaceous red sea-weeds
collected by ladies on our northern coast for ornamental purposes. Probable in no part of the world are
more beautiful and luxuriant specimens found than at Magnolia Cove, Gloucester, Mass. Specimens
vary very much in breadth. Some have the main divisions an inch wide and the terminal divisions are
densely flabellate. Others are scarcely an eight of an inch wide and the terminal divisions are rather
diffuse, the fimbriations being prolonged into sharp teeth. The first-mentioned form approaches the
figure in the Phycologia Britannica, while the last resembles Sphærococcus coronopifolius. The Long
Island forms are scarcely an inch high. The species is found at all seasons of the year, and inhabits
rather deep water, its favorite habitat being the roots of Laminariæ.
LOMENTARIA, (Gaul.) Thuret.
(From lomentum, a pod with constricted joints.)
Fronds filamentous, branching, hollow, with constricted nodes, formed of one or
more layers of roundish-angular cells with a few longitudinal filaments in the
interior; tetraspores tripartite, borne in cavities formed by the infolding of the
cortex; cystocarps external, sessile, containing a nucleus composed of oblong masses
of irregularly radiating spores attached to a placenta surrounding a large basal
carpogenic cell, which is connected with the pericarp by filaments.
A small genus, containing species which have been placed by some writers in Chylocladia and
Chrysymenia. As limited by Thuret, the genus includes species in which the tetraspores occupy small
cavities hollowed out in the cortex. The development of the fronds has not been fully studied. They are
hollow and much constricted at the joints, but in our species there are no distinct diaphragms as in
Champia. The walls of the filaments are composed of a membrane consisting of a single layer of
roundish-angular cells, or there are two or three layers, the outer cells being smaller than the rest. The
inner side of the wall is traversed by long, slender filaments, to which are attached, laterally, small
round cells, by which the filaments are attached to the walls. The cystocarps are external, and, in
section, one sees a large basal triangular-ovoid carpogenic cell surrounded by closely packed sporiferous
lobes, in which the cells are at first arranged in the form of densely radiating filaments, but at the time
of maturity become irregularly placed. The pericarp is rather broadly ovate, with a distinct terminal
carpostome, and its walls are connected with the carpogenic cell by filaments, between the bases of
which lie the sporiferous masses, around which is a gelatinous envelope.
L. UNCINATA, Menegh., in J. Ag., Spec. (Chylocladia Baileyana, Harv., Ner. Am.
Bor., Part II, p. 185, Pl. 20 c.—Chylocladia uncinata, Ag., Zan. Icon. Adr., Pl. 43.—
Chondrosiphon uncinatus, Kütz.)
Fronds brownish red, densely tufted, two to five inches high, tubular, irregularly
much branched, branches about one-tenth of an inch in diameter, divaricated,
secund or scattered, often recurved, branchlets narrowly fusiform, much contracted
at base, secund; tetraspores tripartite