179 



THE ELK-KELP. 



By William Albert Setchell. 



One of the most interesting of the giant Laminariaceas of 

 the Western Coast of North America, is the so-called Elk- 

 Kelp or Ball-Kelp of the southern waters. Extending from 

 the peninsula of Lower California, where it was found at 

 Todas Santos Bay by Prof, and Mrs. Carl Eigenmaun (cf. 

 Farlow, Bull. Torr. Bot. Club, XVI; 7, 1889), it is best known 

 from the region about San Diego, where it has been collected 

 by Mr. Daniel Cleveland and Prof. Eigenmanu. The type 

 specimen, however, was procured at the Island of Santa 

 Catalina by Dr. Gustav Eisen, although credited by Ares- 

 choug to the neighborhood of San Francisco. It has 

 never been recognized so far north as San Francisco, 

 but does certainly occur in the Santa Barbara Channel, 

 although exact data and specimens are not available to the 

 writer at present. Battered specimens are occasionally cast 

 ashore, even as far north as Santa Cruz, but always after 

 severe storms from the south, according to Dr. C. L. Ander- 

 son, who has collected them. 



The Elk-Kelp, then, is a plant of the waters below Point 

 Conception, where it takes the place of the more northern Nere- 

 ocystis Luetkeana. Much fuller information is needed as to the 

 distribution of both of these forms before the exact limits of 

 their range can be determined. N. Lneikeana is the north- 

 ern form, being said to occur upon the shores of Kamtschatka 

 (cf. De Toni, Sylloge Algarum, III; 368, 1895), at the Island 

 of Sitka, Puget Sound, and upon the shores of California 

 down to Santa Cruz and Monterey. The writer has found it 

 cast ashore at Port Harford, in San Luis Obispo County, and 

 there is considerable reason for believing that it occurs, also, 

 near Santa Barbara, in company with N. giganteu. Mr. 

 Cleveland has never seen it in the waters about San Diego, 

 nor did it occur to the writer in the neighborhood of San 

 Pedro, although N. gigantea was fairly abundant. It seems, 

 therefore, that these two species divide the California Coast 

 between them, overlapping, probably, at Santa Barbara. 



Erythea, Vol. IV., No. 12 [19 December, 1896]. 



