
MARINE AQUARIA 

Punctaria latifolia (Grey) or Broad-leaved Dotted Weed, is a variable 
plant which has a cylindrical stem enlarged into a flat tender frond 3 
inches wide and 12 inches long, of pale olive-green color, crisped on the 
edges and dotted with minute spore masses. Very common between 
tide-marks along the whole Middle Atlantic coast. 
Chorda filum (Stack.) or Mermaid’s Fish-line, consists of thread-like 
tough and elastic cords rising from a disclike holdfast, which reach a 
length of 10 to 30 feet, dependent upon the depth of water. It affords 
an anchorage to many of the smaller Alga, which attach themselves to it. 
Quite common along the Middle Atlantic coast. 
Chordaria divaricata (Ag.) or String Weed, is a bushy tough and 
elastic dark olive-green plant with threadlike sticky cylindrical branches 
fastened by a small disc to shells, stones and other alge. It is a deep- 
water plant usually not over 15 inches high, distributed along the entire 
Middle Atlantic coast. C. flagelliformis (Ag.) or Whiplash, is a very dark- 
brown, threadlike plant greatly resembling the foregoing. 
There are quite a number of other Olive-colored Algz, but as none 
of them should find a place in the marine aquarium, they need not be 
mentioned. 
Rep Marine Atc&. Rhodospermee are mostly of fragile texture 
and grow in sheltered rock pools, protected from light and the chafing of 
the waves, or in deep water. Exposed to strong light they lose much of 
their red color and become greenish, yellowish and white, and soon decay. 
This group also comprehends some of orange, brown and purple colors, 
but most of them are a deep red. It is the largest order, and only a few 
of the most generally distributed forms will be described. 
Corallina officinalis (Linn.) or Coral Weed, is a variable alga both in 
size and general appearance, which may vary in color from reddish-purple 
to greenish-red. It is usually from 1 to 4 inches in height, the frond 
composed of slightly flattened filaments with the stem and principal 
branches diverging from the edges; the plant being composed of small 
wedge-shaped joints. It grows in great abundance upon rocks, wreckage, 
and in tidewater pools along the Middle Atlantic coast and in California, 
Delesseria sinuosa (Lam.) or Oak Leaf Weed, is a delicate, often para- 
sitical, 3 to 8 inch high alga, of which the stem is flattened to form the 
midrib and veins of the fronds, greatly resembling an oakleaf. It is met 
with in the drift on the beach, and is a deepwater species of fine pink to 
deep lake-red color. Another form is D. alata (Lam.), having the mar- 
gins of the lobes entire and the fronds narrower. Both found north of 
Cape Cod and on the California coast. 
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