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Electronic Flora of South Australia Genus Fact Sheet
Phylum Phaeophyta – Order Sporochnales
Thallus (sporophyte) usually 15–50 cm long, with percurrent, radially much branched, terete axes, tomentose and covered with soft tufts of assimilatory filaments, attached by a rhizoidal holdfast. Growth from an apical meristem surmounted by a tuft of trichothallic assimilatory filaments. Structure haplostichous, pseudoparenchymatous, with a medulla of elongate cells and a smooth, 1 cell thick, cortex of phaeoplastic cells but with scattered tufts of assimilatory filaments.
Reproduction: Reproduction by sessile, unilocular sporangia accompanied by multicellular, elongate-clavate, paraphyses, forming discrete sori surrounding the lateral tufts of assimilatory filaments. Gametophytes unknown.
Life history unknown.
Type species: A. australis (Harvey) Womersley comb. nov.
Taxonomic notes: A. australis, as suggested in Womersley (1967, p.238), cannot remain in Nereia since the sporangia occur in discrete sori with paraphyses, surrounding the tufts of assimilatory filaments, with the branch surface smooth between the sori, in contrast to Nereia which has short, papillate, filaments covering the surface with separate, single, sporangia amongst them, not forming defined sori.
The genus is named as a "southern Nereia."
References:
WOMERSLEY, H.B.S. (1967). A critical survey of the marine algae of southern Australia. II. Phaeophyta. Aust. J. Bot. 15, 189–270.
The Marine Benthic Flora of Southern Australia Part II complete list of references.
Publication:
Womersley, H.B.S. (14 December, 1987)
The Marine Benthic Flora of Southern Australia
Part II
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