- Reference
- Austral.J.Bot. 121 (1976)
- Conservation Code
- Not threatened
- Naturalised Status
- Native to Western Australia
- Name Status
- Current
Scientific Description
Habit and structure. Thallus erect, medium red, 10–20 cm high, delicate and adhering strongly to paper, complanately and irregularly branched with marginal branchlets; main branches 0.5–1 cm broad, tapering gradually to much divided, slender, often dendroid systems with ultimate branchlets 0.2–0.5 mm broad, apices acute. Holdfast discoid; usually epiphytic on Amphibolis antarctica. Structure uniaxial, with an alternately pinnate vein system with a slender medulla of rhizoidal filaments around the axial and periaxial filaments and a cortex 2–3 cells thick, with inner ovoid cells 50–80 µm in diameter and well developed rosettes of small ovoid outer cells 6–14 µm in diameter, each distinctly separated from other rosette cells, largely covering the inner cells on older branches. Rhodoplasts dense, discoid to elongate and becoming ribbon shaped.
Reproduction. Sexual thalli probably dioecious; procarpic. Carpogonial branches 3-celled, borne on inner cortical cells on the thallus margin, occasionally with a sterile cell on the hypogynous cell; post-fertilization events as in C. blepharicarpus, with the carposporophyte having several large central cells, radiating gonimoblast filaments terminating in chains of ovoid carposporangia 15–25 µm in diameter, and a basal small-celled nutritive tissue. Cystocarps marginal, protruding, 500–750 µm in diameter, non-ostiolate, with a pericarp. Spermatangia unknown. Tetrasporangia scattered in the cortex, ovoid, 16–25 µm in diameter, zonately divided.
Distribution. King George Sound, W. Aust., to Walkerville, Vic., and NE Tas.
[After Womersley, Mar. Benthic Fl. Southern Australia IIIA: 427 (1994)]