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Electronic Flora of South Australia Genus Fact Sheet
Phylum Rhodophyta – Class Florideophyceae – Order Corallinales – Family Corallinaceae – Subfamily Corallinoideae – Tribe Corallineae
Thallus with few to numerous erect, pinnate, geniculate fronds, often with clustered to whorled branchlets, intergenicula usually compressed, cuneate above, elongate and subterete below; holdfast crustose, stolons rare or absent, usually epilithic, sometimes epiphytic. Structure. Intergenicula with (8–) 10–20 (–25) arching tiers of elongate medullary cells, with lateral cell-fusions but without lateral pit-connections. Genicula of single tiers of elongate, thicker walled, cells. Cortex present on intergenicula, of short splaying to anticlinal filaments, terminating in short epithallial cells.
Reproduction: Conceptacles usually axial and terminal, occasionally with short branchlets. Gametangial thalli dioecious. Carpogonial filaments 2-celled, arising on floor of female conceptacles, carposporangia in 2–6-celled filaments near the margins of a thin fusion cell. Male conceptacles with short beaks, without branchlets, spermatangia terminating short filaments on the floor and lower walls of chambers.
Tetrasporangia (or bisporangia) borne on separate thalli, conceptacles occasionally bearing branchlets, ovoid-urceolate, with several to numerous tetrasporangia arising from the chamber floor, with interspersed paraphyses in young conceptacles; intergenicula narrow just below conceptacles.
Life history triphasic with isomorphic gametophytes and tetrasporophytes.
Lectotype species: Corallina officinalis Linnaeus 1758: 805 (Schmitz 1889: 455).
Taxonomic notes: Corallina contains numerous species, with the type species widely distributed in temperate waters, often forming mats near low water level. Although information on species delimitation in Corallina is limited, probably only a single species occurs in southern Australia.
References:
LINNAEUS, C. (1758). Systema Naturae. 10 ed. Vol. 1. (Salvii: Stockholm.)
SCHMITZ, F. (1889). Systematische Ubersicht der bisher bekannten Gattungen der Florideen. Flora, Jena 72, 435–456, Plate 21.
The Marine Benthic Flora of Southern Australia Part IIIB complete list of references.
Publication:
Womersley, H.B.S. (28 June, 1996)
The Marine Benthic Flora of Southern Australia
Rhodophyta. Part IIIB. Gracilarialse, Rhodymeniales, Corallinales and Bonnemaisoniales
Reproduced with permission from The Marine Benthic Flora of Southern Australia Part IIIB 1996, by H.B.S. Womersley. Australian Biological Resources Study, Canberra. Copyright Commonwealth of Australia.
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