Ser, MelanospermEjE. Fam. Fucea. 



Plate CCLXV. 



CYSTOSEIRA ERICOIDES, Ag. 



Gen. Char. Frond much branched, occasionally leafy at the base ; branches 

 becoming more slender upwards, and containing strings of simple 

 air-vessels within their substance. Receptacles terminal, small, cellular, 

 pierced by numerous pores, which communicate with immersed, 

 spherical conceptacles, containing parietal spores and tufted autheridia. 

 Cystoseira (Ag.), — from kvotis, a bladder, and o-eipa, a chain ; because 

 the air vessels are often arranged in strings. 



Cystoseira ericoides; stem thick, woody, short, cylindrical, beset with 

 numerous, slender, filiform branches, variously divided, and densely 

 clothed with small, spine-like, awl-shaped ramuli ; air-vessels small, 

 solitary beneath the apices of the branches ; receptacles cylindrical, 

 armed with awl- shaped processes. 



Cystoseira ericoides, Ag. Sp. Alg. vol. i. p. 52. Ag. Syst. p. 281. Spreng. 

 Syst. Veg. vol. iv. p. 316. Grev. Alg. Brit. p. 4. Hook. Br. Fl. vol. ii. 

 p. 265. Harv. in Mack. Fl. Rib. part 3. p. 167. Harv. Man. p. 18. Fndl. 

 Zrd Suppl. p. 30. /. Ag. Gen. et Sp. Alg. vol. i. p. 221. 



Halerica ericoides, Kiitz. Phyc. p. 354. 



Eucus ericoides, Sp. pi. p. 1631. Good, and Wood, in Linn. Trans, vol. iii. 

 p. 130. E. Bot. t. 1968. Turn. Hist. t. 191. 



Fucus tamariscifolius, Huds. Fl. Ang. p. 576. Stack. Ner. Brit. p. 44. t. 11. 

 Turn. Syn. Fuc. p. 88. (excl. syn. Gmel.) 



Fucus selaginoides, Fsper, Ic. Fuc. vol. i. p. 69. t. 31. (excl. syn. Gniel.) Good, 

 and Wood. Linn. Trans, vol. iii. p. 132. Turn. Syn. p. 85. 



Hab. On marine rocks, near low-water mark and in tide-pools. Perennial. 

 Summer and autumn. Frequent on the shores of the south of 

 England and south and west of Ireland. Yarmouth Keach, Mr. 

 Turner. Port Hush, Antrim, Mrs. Ovens. 



Geogr. Distr. On the Atlantic shores of Europe and the north of Africa. 



Descr. Root a large conical or flattened disc. Frond generally solitary, twelve to 

 eighteen inches in length, rising with a cylindrical stem nearly half an inch 

 in diameter. This stem is four to six inches long, and either simple or forked, 

 or having four or five main divisions, which support numerous slender, 

 crowded, bitripinnated branches. Branches as thin as whip-cord, decompound, 

 all the divisions alternate and distichous, densely set with short, spine-like 

 ramuli or leaves, each of which has a gland-like pore on its back, near the 

 base. Air vessels few and small, oblong, placed usually in the terminal 

 branchlets just below the base of the receptacle. Receptacles formed in the 

 apices of all the branches, oblong, cylindrical, becoming nodose, always 

 armed with spine-like rainuli, similar to those that clothe the branches. 

 Spores obovate, with wide borders. When growing, under water, the frond 

 reflects beautiful prismatic colours, which arc lost when it is lifted into the 

 air: — the colour is then a yellowish olive. On being dried the frond turns 

 black, and shrinks considerably. Substance tou^h and leathery. 



