Seaweeds of the South African South Coast

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Order Ceramiales

Family Delesseriaceae

Apoglossum spathulatum (Sonder) Womersley and Shepley 1982: 329

Plants red, small (to 12 mm tall). Blades membranous, 5-11 mm long and 1.1-1.8 mm wide, linear-spatulate, substipitate, apices rounded to slightly obtuse, margins entire, microscopic veins present; branching from midrib, usually alternately from either side of the blade, rarely from margin; blades capable of secondary (rhizoidal) attachment to substratum. Growth from single apical cell; blade monostromatic except in midrib. Tetrasporangial sori discrete, circular to oval, near distal ends of blades, mature tetrasporangia 24-28 µm in diameter; cystocarps formed on most orders of branches, singly or in a pair on the midrib of each branch. Male thalli not observed.

Collections, ecology and regional distribution

Found from Wilderness to just north of Durban (29-51).

World distribution: fairly widespread in tropical and warm temperate water (Guiry & Guiry 2013).

Type locality: Western Australia (Silva et al. 1996)

Note: Wynne (1984) describes this species in detail.

 

Apoglossum spathulatum, re-drawn from Wynne (1984). A- cystocarpic plant, B – tetrasporic plant.

 

Referencess Apoglossum spathulatum

Guiry, M.D. & Guiry, G.M. 2013. AlgaeBase. World-wide electronic publication, National University of Ireland, Galway. http://www.algaebase.org; searched September 2013.

Silva, P.C., Basson, P.W. & Moe, R.L. 1996. Catalogue of the benthic marine algae of the Indian Ocean. University of California Publications in Botany 79: 1-1259.

Womersley, H.B.S. & Shepley, E.A. 1982. Southern Australian species of Hypoglossum (Delesseriaceae, Rhodophyta). Australian Journal of Botany 30: 321-346, 9 figs.

Wynne, M.J. 1984. The occurrence of Apoglossum and Delesseria (Ceramiales, Rhodophyta) in South Africa. South African Journal of Botany 3: 137-145.

 

Cite this record as:

Anderson RJ, Stegenga H, Bolton JJ. 2016. Seaweeds of the South African South Coast.
World Wide Web electronic publication, University of Cape Town, http://southafrseaweeds.uct.ac.za; Accessed on 18 November 2024.