1925] Setchell-Gardner: Melanophyceae 601 



man Exp., 1901, p. 428 ; Setchell and Gardner, Alg. N.W. Amer., 1901, 

 p. 257; Setchell, Kelps of IT. S. and Alaska, 1912o, p. 151. 



There are two series of Laminarias in our northern waters present 

 in great variety of form and seemingly overlapping forms which are 

 puzzling as to their proper taxonomic treatment. The one series has 

 passed under the names of forms of Laminaria bullata Kjellman and 

 the other under those of forms of L. Bongardimia P. and R. The 

 L. hullata type (cf. Kjellman, 1889, pi. 2, fig. 5) has a simple individual 

 blade and a series of pronounced bullae within each border. From this 

 simple type, forms with a great variety of lengths of stipe, breadth of 

 blade, more pronounced or less pronounced bullae (even almost, or 

 quite absent) are found. The compression of the stipe also varies 

 greatly in degree. The wider blades become broadly oblong to even 

 cordate at the base and split deeply into a few broad segments. In 

 several of its states it is to be distinguished from very similar forms 

 of the plants, usually grouped under L. Bongardiana, by its some- 

 ■\vhat less flattened stipe and the presence, or often only indication, of 

 bullae. Both are species possibly better reckoned in the digitate 

 section, yet L. Bongardiana (see below under L. platynieris) is more 

 properly digitate while L. cuneifolm is perhaps more typically of the 

 saccharina-gvo\\\). We hesitate somewhat in referring the L. hullata 

 Kjellman series of forms to L. cuneifolia J, Ag., but J. G. Agardh cer- 

 tainly included the simpler forms of Kjellman 's species under his. 

 Agardh makes no statement as to type, but probably regards the 

 Ochotsk 8ea plants from that point of view. The American plants 

 placed by Agardh under his L. cuneifolia, viz., one from Esquimault, 

 is the same as the L. hullata f. simplex S. and G. We can see no way 

 of distinguishing between the two species from the descriptions and 

 consequently unite them, placing the forms we have described under 

 L. cuneifolia. The L. cuneifolia of Greenland, however, seems to be a 

 different species and is closely related to L. groenlandica Rosenvinge. 



We are uncertain as to the nature of the Alaskan plant referred 

 by Saunders (1901, p. 429) to L. cuneifolia; since he says that the 

 blade is "thin, papyraceous, light olive green and very brittle in 

 drying, quite regularly wavy on the margin" and have not included 

 it in our synonymy. 



