ALGAE COLLECTED ON THE PRESIDENTIAL CRUISE 



OF 1938 



By WM. RANDOLPH TAYLOR 

 University of Michigan, Ann Arbor 



(With Two Plates) 



The algae collected on the 1938 Presidential Cruise of the Honor- 

 able Franklin D. Roosevelt by Waldo L. Schmitt, Curator of Inverte- 

 brates at the United States National Museum, consist of eight lots 

 from five places visited. Ordinarily, so few samples would have 

 yielded little, but it so happened that three of the eight were pro- 

 ductive of novelties, and two, coming from places without previous 

 algal record and quite unlikely soon again to yield collections, were 

 of considerable special interest. By reason of lack of previous visits 

 by phycologists nearly all of the records are new for their stations. 

 For the opportunity of studying these algae the writer is indebted to 

 the collector and the authorities of the National Museum. Type 

 material of the new species has been deposited in the United States 

 National Herbarium. 



Of the collections from Magdalena Bay little need be said. They 

 supplement each other and were dominated by Chaetomorpha and 

 Griffthsia. The former genus is represented by C. crassa, a species 

 more familiar from the West Indies, and one of a number of tropical 

 Atlantic species turning up in collections from Pacific Central 

 America and neighboring warm waters. The Griffithsia is even more 

 interesting. On the west coast, species of this genus have given 

 systematists trouble because they are persistingly sterile. On the east 

 coast they are few in number but better known. On the European 

 west coast they are more numerous. Here we have a species which is 

 sufficiently characterized by its sporophytic phase to add a recognizable 

 report to the American flora of a section of the genus as yet not 

 reported there. It is very much simpler than any of the east-coast 

 species and appears to be undescribed. 



The Clipperton Island collections are unique, for landing on this 

 isolated atoll is specially difficult. The jars of mixed algae from the 

 lagoon were very surprising to the author. He had incorrectly assumed 



Smithsonian Miscellaneous Collections, Vol.98, No. 9 



