54 MESOGLOIACEAE 
posite or verticillate, usually sessile, occasionally with one pedicel 
cell, or rarely terminating a very short branch, often regenerating 
from base; peripheral assimilatory filaments occasionally showing 
median [ong-ellipsoidal, suborbicular or irregular swellings (ab- 
normalities or plurilocular sporangia?) consisting mostly of two 
occasionally separated series of cells. [PLATE 12; PLATE КИ: 
FIGURES 10-20 
Washed ashore on a sand beach, Ancón, Feb. 13, 1907 (Coker 
93, type); also, in two meters of water at Isla Vieja, Bahía de la 
Independencia (Coker 09640 р.р.). 
The mode of growth in Myriocladia grandis appears to be 
essentially the same as described by Reinke for Chordaria flagelli- 
formis and C. divaricata, with the assimilatory filaments both 
primary and secondary in origin. An application of the key to 
the genera of the Chordariaceae in the Engler & Prantl, “ Die 
natürlichen Pflanzenfamilien,” using the mode of growth as a dis- ` 
tinguishing character, would throw the present plant into Meso- 
gloia rather than Myriocladia, yet in the same work (p. 227) under 
Myriocladia we find “Sprossaufbau nicht bekannt.” We have 
been unable to attempt any comparisons as to this character with 
the type species of Myriocladia (M. Lovenii J. Ag.), having no 
specimens of it, but M. grandis certainly differs much from the 
type of the genus Mesogloia | М. vermiculata (Sm.) Le Jol.] in being 
scarcely gelatinous, the peripheral filaments projecting far beyond 
the scanty mucus at their bases. The affinities of M. grandis 
would appear to lie with M. Sciurus Harv., which J. Agardh 4 
accepted as а member of his genus Myriocladia. But it differs 
Пот this Australian species, according to the published descriptions 
and figures, in its distinctly complanate main axis and in its rela- 
tively and actually much shorter peripheral filaments. We have 
no convincing evidence that what we have described as possible 
plurilocular sporangia are anything more than abnormal or 
exuberant developments in wholly vegetative filaments, but they 
have a certain resemblance to structures figured and described by 
J. Agardh as possible “ trichosporangia” in Myriocladia and related 
genera. 
PLATE 12. Myriocladia grandis 
Photograph of 
natural dimensions 
the dried type specimen (Coker 93), about three eighths of the — 
oh S еы 
