Udotea glaucescens J.Agardh

Scientific Description

Habit and structure. Thallus green to grey-green, to 4 cm tall, with a moderately large sand-binding holdfast and a densely corticated stipe to 6 mm long and 0.8–1.5 mm diam., grading abruptly into cuneate to flabellate and usually clustered blades 2.5–3.0 cm wide. Stipe heavily calcified, composed of tangled subparallel primary terete siphons 60–100 μm diam., bearing irregularly branched digitate lateral appendages, these imbricating and forming a pseudocortex. Blades lightly calcified, unistratose, composed of visible siphons 50–75 μm diam. which are laterally coherent but often disassociating, sparingly subdichotomously divided at intervals of 3–4 mm and unequally constricted above the dichotomies.

Distribution. Widespread in the tropical Indo-Pacific, including Qld. In W.A. known south to Shark Bay.

Habitat. Usually growing in sand.

[After Huisman, Algae of Australia: Mar. Benthic Algae of North-western Australia, 1. Green and Brown Algae 149 (2015)]