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Electronic Flora of South Australia Genus Fact Sheet

Genus ENCYOTHALIA Harvey 1859a: pl. 62

Phylum Phaeophyta – Order Sporochnales

Thallus 20–100 cm long, with a single, percurrent axis branched radially, with short branchlets and numerous long laterals also bearing numerous slender branchlets (0.5–) 1–1.5 cm long and 1–3 mm apart, each with a prominent apical tuft of assimilatory filaments; attachment by a rhizoidal holdfast. Growth from a convex branch meristem, surmounted by the tuft of assimilatory, trichothallic filaments. Structure haplostichous and pseudoparenchymatous, with a core of elongate axial cells and a smooth-surfaced cortex which in larger branches and the main axis increases by periclinal divisions.

Reproduction: Sori compact, surrounding the long laterals for several centimetres (including the bases of numerous branchlets), not reaching the apices of the long laterals, composed of densely grouped clavate paraphyses bearing lateral unilocular sporangia.

Life history unknown, probably diplohaplontic and heteromorphic.

Type species: E. cliftonii Harvey.

Taxonomic notes: A monospecific genus distinguished by the habit and position of the sporangial sori on lateral branches, including the bases of the short, sterile, branchlets.

References:

HARVEY, W.H. (1859a). Phycologia Australica. Vol. 2, Plates 61–120. (Reeve: London.)

The Marine Benthic Flora of Southern Australia Part II complete list of references.

Author: H.B.S. Womersley

Publication: Womersley, H.B.S. (14 December, 1987)
The Marine Benthic Flora of Southern Australia
Part II
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