NO. 9 ALGAE TAYLOR J 5 



branching pseudodichotomously, or occasionally slightly irregularly in 

 upper portions ; lower parts of the plant of coarse filaments which 

 measure to 300 jj, diameter at the slightly swollen nodes, the thick- 

 walled cells to 1260 fi, long, and which branch at wide angles ; middle 

 and upper portions of the plant of very erect more slender filaments 

 branching at very acute angles, the cells when supporting a fork some- 

 what clavate, otherwise subcylindrical, about 125 ^ diameter, the cells 

 to 970 /a long ; ultimate branching more often alternate than anywhere 

 else in the plant, the branchlets to 15-20 fi diameter, their cells to 

 100-200 jx long, those at the apices of the filaments tapered, rounded- 

 acute ; colorless hairs absent ; spherical tetrasporangia 50-75 n diame- 

 ter, on one-celled stalks, solitary at the nodes of the upper middle 

 parts of the plant, apparently very infrequent, without any trace of 

 involucral cells ; sexual organs not seen. 



Dredged in abundance at 12-20 m. over sandy bottom, off Punta 

 Gorda and nearby, Cap San Lucas, Baja California, Mexico (Schmitt 

 13), July 19, 1938. 



This plant probably represents the species described by Setchell 

 and Gardner (1937, p. 87) as Neomonospora multiramosa Setchell 

 & Gardner. It is shorter, and the ultimate branchlets are more 

 slender than they report ; the tetrasporangia are a little larger in their 

 greatest dimension reached, and in particular, they divide in tetrahedral 

 (tripartite) fashion, not cruciately. The dimensional differences are 

 of but secondary importance ; the fashion of division of the sporangia 

 is important and the writer has most carefully confirmed his observa- 

 tion on material conserved in formalin. He sees no need for placing 

 these plants in the old algal genus Monospora (or a substitute for it), 

 since the sporangia there are borne laterally on special branchlets of 

 a well-defined type, not present here. The species appears to belong 

 to a small section of the genus Griffithsia ill-known by reason of the 

 infrequence of reproductive organs, but characterized among other 

 features by the lack of any involucral cells about the tetrasporangia. 

 It is smaller than G. arachnoidea C. Agardh (G. furcellata J. Ag.) 

 (Borgesen 1930, p. 29; Funk 1922, p. 226, pi. 5, fig. 5) with shorter 

 and probably more clavate cells. This is a species of the Mediter- 

 ranean and the Canary Islands. It shows marked resemblance to the 

 larger G. comosa Grunow (1867, p. 62, pi. to, fig. 2) from New 

 Zealand, which has the same swollen ends to the apparently longer 

 cells, but tetrasporangia are not known for that species. In the lack 

 of sufficient evidence to link these specimens with either of the earlier- 

 described plants it seems best to treat them as new, since they can, 

 with the aid of the tetrasporangia, be fairly clearly defined. 



