Seaweeds of the South African South Coast

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Order Corallinales

Family Corallinaceae

Subfamily Corallinoideae

Jania adhaerens Lamouroux 1816: 270

Plants small (to 2.5 cm tall), grayish to pink, often entangled with other algae and forming dense, short turfs. Holdfast stoloniferous, cylindrical, 70-100 µm diameter, with small discoid attachments. Axes rather irregularly dichotomously branched, branch angle usually more than 45^o. Genicula inconspicuous. Intergenicula cylindrical to subcylindrical, 60-130(170) µm diameter, 2-5 times as long as wide. Fertile intergenicula axial, flask-shaped, much wider than vegetative segments, each bearing a single swollen conceptacle with pore in upper edge of intergeniculum, and one or two distal branches.

Collections, ecology and regional distribution

Epilithic and epiphytic, commonly as main component of low, sandy turfs in the lower eulittoral and shallow sublittoral zones. Found from Cape Hangklip eastward to northern KwaZulu –Natal (19-58).

World distribution: worldwide in tropical and warm temperate oceans (Guiry & Guiry 2014).

Type locality: Meditterannean Sea (Lamouroux 1816).

Note: Stegenga et al. (1997) report that many specimens from west of Cape Agulhas have dimensions intermediate between those of J. capillacea Harvey (about 60 µm diameter) and J. adhaerens (120-200 µm diameter), suggesting that these species need further study.

 

Jania adhaerens, on sand-affected rocks, Nature’s Valley.

Jania adhaerens, herbarium specimen (scale on left in 1mm divisions).

Jania adhaerens, detail (scale bar = 1 mm).

Jania adhaerens, . 1. Detail of plant with tetrasporangial conceptacles. 2. Tetrasporangium. Reproduced from Stegenga et al. (1997).

 

References Jania adhaerens

Guiry, M.D. & Guiry, G.M. 2014. AlgaeBase. World-wide electronic publication, National University of Ireland, Galway. http://www.algaebase.org; searched on 12 March 2014.

Lamouroux J. V. 1816. Histoires des polypieres coralligènes flexibles vulgairement nommés zoophytes. Caen, 559 pp., pl. 1-19.

Stegenga, H., Bolton, J.J. and R. J. Anderson. 1997. Seaweeds of the South African west coast. Contributions from the Bolus Herbarium 18: 655 pp.

 

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 20 April 2024.