Chapter 1: The Characeae Plant

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definition of species (Proctor 1975), taxonomists in the 21 st century can provide a better
taxonomy.
The use and citation of designated clones in physiological studies is to be encouraged, given
the past taxonomic difficulties with the group. Specimens used for physiological studies
should also be vouchered (preserved by pressing or in 70% alcohol, and lodged in an
internationally recognised herbarium) as a standard practice. Misidentification of taxa in the
past (at both species and genus level) could go some way towards explaining difficulties in
generalisation about characeae physiological processes.
1.4.2 Individual species’ stories
1.4.2.1 Chara australis R. Br.
One of the most popular species used in physiological studies is the dioecious species Chara
australis. The species was collected first from the vicinity of Sydney in New South Wales,
Australia, by Robert Brown, a botanist on Matthew Flinders’ exploratory expedition to
circumnavigate Australia in 1802-03. It was one of only two species in family Characeae
described for Australia in the early 19 th century (Brown 1810). At least two collections in the
1800s were named Chara australis (which means ‘southern Chara’), but the one named by
Brown has priority, so it is the one that retains the name. Later, Alexander Braun (1843)
described a similar specimen as Chara plebeja, which he later amalgamated with C. australis
as a subspecies (Braun and Nordstedt 1882). In the same publication (Braun and Nordstedt
1882) Braun was inclined to distinguish more varieties and forms of Chara australis, so he
presented a descriptive list including C. australis var. nobilis form stuatiana, var. lucida form
tenerior, var. vieillardii and forms vitiensis and simplicissima as well as subspecies plebeja.
The group was reviewed by Zaneveld (1940) who had the advantage of seeing more material
from a diversity of places, but he followed Braun’s taxonomy closely. In the 1960s R.D.
Wood amalgamated the entire complex with monoecious Chara corallina Kl. ex Willd. from
south-east Asia (Wood 1962), on the basis of its morphological similarities. Wood (1965)
retained many of the subdivisions recognised by Braun and Zaneveld, but this time within the
species Chara corallina. Thus since the 1960s we have had Chara corallina with three
varieties and eight forms, at least half of which were dioecious, the other half monoecious.
Proctors work (summarised in Proctor 1975) established that monoecious Chara corallina
and dioecious Chara australis were different species, but the status of many of the other