- Reference
- Mar.Algae Southern Great Barrier Reef 124 (1983)
- Conservation Code
- Not threatened
- Naturalised Status
- Native to Western Australia
- Name Status
- Current
Scientific Description
Habit and structure. Thallus sprawling, drying dark brown, forming loose to closely entangled clumps. Branches to 4 cm tall, often with percurrent branches, forming holdfasts where they touch the substratum. Axes rigid but subcartilaginous, not rehydrating, terete, 0.5–1.5 mm diam.; branches at 90° to main axes. Ultimate branchlets 0.7–3.0 mm wide, commonly 0.5–2.5 mm apart. Adventitious branchlets widely spaced along main axes, developing at right angles, from barely protruding to 1 mm long. Epidermal layer with few secondary pit connections between cells when viewed in longitudinal section. Lenticular thickenings very few or absent in medullary cells, although cell walls often thickened.
Reproduction. Tetrasporangial plants bearing single fertile ultimate branchlets. Tetrasporangia formed in parallel arrangement.
Distribution. Occurs on Barrow Island and Thevenard Island, north-western Australia; also Wilson Island, Mast Head Island, Hoskyn Island reef, Fairfax Island reef and Carlisle Island, Queensland.
[After Y. Metti, J.M. Huisman & A.J.K. Millar in Algae of Australia: Marine Benthic Algae of North-western Australia, 2. Red Algae: 526–528 (2018)]