Howe: Puycorocicar STUDIES 511 
Avrainvillea nigricans Mutr. & Boodle, f.p. Jour. Bot. 27 : 70. 
1889. Not A. nigricans Decaisne. 
Mostly bright- or sordid-green when living, becoming fuscous- 
brown or nigrescent on drying, forming cespitose masses with 
usually crowded, subterete, fusiform, clavate, or finger-shaped 
sometimes capitate, often difform, branched, and anastomosing » 
lobes, never developing a flabellum ; lobes azonate, mostly 4~12 
cylindrical with occasional constrictions, always strongly con- 
Disrrisution : The West Indies. 
Apparently common in the West Indies, ranging at least from 
the northern Bahamas to Jamaica and Porto Rico, growing from 
low-water mark down to a depth of one meter, often on exposed 
rocks near the low-water line. The species is represented in the 
herbarium of the New York Botanical Garden at the present time 
by specimens under seventeen collection numbers. Vo. 770 of the 
Phycotheca Boreali-Americana of Collins, Holden, and Setchell, 
issued as Avrainvillea longicaulis (Kiitz.) Murr. & Bood., and xo. 
771 of the same series, issued as Avrainvillea nigricans Decaisne, 
both collected at Montego Bay, Jamaica, by Mrs. C. E. Pease and 
Miss E. Butler, belong with the present species, at least in the 
three sets examined, though in one set, the material issued under 
no. 770 is mixed with A. nigricans ; however, all three of the 
Species named are found at Montego Bay. Avrainvillea Rawsoni 
is the plant that we once* referred to as “ what we believe to be 
a low-littoral or shallow-water condition of Avrainvillea Mazei,” 
but since we have seen it growing profusely in deeper water in 
Jamaica closely associated with both A. longicaulis (A. Mazet) and 
A. nigricans and without showing the least tendency to intergrade 
With either, we cannot do otherwise than consider it abundantly 
entitled to specific rank. The plant evidently never develops a 
true flabellum and the filaments are thinner-walled, more collapsi- 
* Bull. Torrey Club 32: 568. 1905. 
