[ 1925 ] / cj cS
FUCUS cristatus.
Crested Tufted Fucus.
CRYPTOGAMIA Algce.
Gen. Char. Seeds produced in clustered tubercles,
which burst at their summits.
Spec. Char. Frond membranous, reddish, compressed,
veinless, repeatedly branched; branches alternate,
decurrent, somewhat forked. Capsules small, globular,
terminal.
Syn. Fucus cristatus. Turn. Hist. Fucor. 4 8 . t. 23.
F. crispatus. Linn. Sysi. Nat. ed. 12. v. 2. 718.
DENT by Miss Hutchins from Bantry Bay, Ireland, to
Mr. Turner, by whose persuasion we hasten to communicate
to the public so interesting a discovery, and by whose weighty
authority we are led to refer this Fucus, his variety y, to the
cristatus of the Linnaean herbarium.
Our_ present plant is when dry of a dull darkish brown,
but lik'e the original cristatus, it is redder when fresh. The
numerous fronds, 2 or 3 inches high, are much and repeatedly
branched ; the branches alternate, decurrent; the uppermost
forked and acute. The whole is compressed, but not flat, tubular
within, and seeming to be composed of short transverse
furrowed joints, in the manner of Conferva nigrescens, t. 1 7 1 7 ,
and others. Mr. Turner indeed observes that « too much
confidence is not to be placed in these joints,” and that they
are sometimes wanting, or we should have referred our plant
at once to Conferva. Its fruit is unknown.
With respect to Fucus cristatus in its usual form, as figured
by Mr. Turner from the Linnaean herbarium, its name is
there so written as to look like crispatus, and was so transcribed
and published by Linnaeus himself, nor can any thinv
be more apposite than his account of it in his Systerna; but
Murray, from total ignorance and inattention in compiling
bis editions of Syst. Veg., quotes crispatus of FI. Dan. t. 826;
and the F. crispatus of Wulfen in Jacq. Coll. v. 3. is still a
different species from both.