41 

 NOTES ON KELPS. 



By William Albert Setchell. 



Among the wonders of the Californian flora, the gigantic 

 brown seaweeds, generally known as kelps are by no means 

 the least noticeable. But our knowledge of these plants and 

 of their habits is far from being either complete or satisfac- 

 tory and it is with much pleasure that the writer has availed 

 himself of the privilege of studying in the field, as it were, 

 those forms which had previously been known to him only 

 through herbarium fragments. 



Never yet, has there been published any connected account 

 of the kelps of the Californian coast. Mertens the younger, 

 Postels, Rupreclit, Harvey, Areschoug, and Farlow have 

 contributed the main facts known to us and of these, as far 

 as is known to the writer, only the first and last have had the 

 privilege of seeing any of our forms in their native habitat. 



The treatment, then, which our forms have received in the 

 third volume of De Toni's "Sylloge Algarum " which has 

 just been issued has an especial interest to the algologists of 

 the western coast. 



In the general arrangement of the genera and in the divis- 

 ion into tribes, De Toni has followed very closely Kjell- 

 man's arrangement given in Engler and Prantl's " Die 

 Natuerlichen Pflanzenfamilien (I Th., 2 Abth., pp. 253-254, 

 1893) with the result that within the same tribe we find gen- 

 era of such diverse form and development as Laminaria, 

 Nereocystis, and Eisenia. It certainly seems as if such 

 modifications of the intercalary meristem as are found in the 

 Lessonioid and Alarioid genera, ought to be considered as 

 matters of phylogenetic significance and ought also to receive 

 especial attention in any scheme of classification. 



As far as the writer is able to ascertain, only one Alaria 

 is reported with certainty from the coast of California and 

 this is referred to A. marginata P. & R. It has been distrib- 

 uted under the name of A. esculenta, but the Californian 

 species is certainly not the A. esculenta of the European and 

 especially of the Scandinavian authors. Its midrib is 



Ekythea, Vol. IV., No. 3 [5 March, 1896]. 



