F U C U S Mackaii.
Mackaian Fucits.
CRYPTOGAM]A Alga.
Gen. Char. Seeds produced in clustered tubercles,
which burst at their summits.
Spec. Char. Frond coriaceous, cylindrical, forked,
level-topped, olive-brown ; the summits blunt: vesicles
scattered, innate, elliptical, wider than the
frond.
Syn. Fucus Mackaii. Turn. Hist. Fucor. 116. t. 52.
DISCOVERED in a sheltered bay at Cunnamara, in the
county of Galway, by Mr. James Townshend Mackay, whose
many other discoveries relative to the botany of Ireland we
have often mentioned, and who is commemorated in the
above name, given by Mr. Turner, to whom we are obliged
for specimens of this and the foregoing.
Root a callous disk. Frond from 6 to 10 or 12 inches high,
leathery, of a dark olive brown, repeatedly forked, cylindrical,
except in the lower part, which is somewhat compressed.
The angles or forks are a little rounded or patent; the summits
paler, blunt and level-topped. Several solitary inflations,
.or imbedded vesicles, appear here and there towards the upper
part, but below the youngest branches, much thicker than
the other parts of the frond, and of an elliptical form, being
very vascular internally. Mr. Turner presumes from analogy
that the fructification, hitherto unknown, may resemble that
of F. nodosus, t. 570, and canaliculatus, t. 823, to both
which the present species is nearly akin,
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