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0 P ■*> X X J
E U C U S cartilaginous.
Cartilaginous Fucus.
CRYPTOGAMIA Algar.
Gen. Char. Seeds produced in clustered tubercles,
which burst at their summits.
Spec. Char. Frond cartilaginous, repeatedly pinnate,
with a naked stalk: the subdivisions alternate, compressed,
nearly linear; the ultimate ones short,
obtuse, bearing the fruit.
Syn. Fucus cartilagineus. Linn. Syst. Veg. ed. 13. 8 1 6 .
Turn. Syn. 2 8 3 . Gunn. Norv. v. 3 . 108. t. 3.f. 5.
F. capensis. Gmel. Fuci, 157. t. 17- ĥ 1*
F. versicolor. Gmel. Fuci, 158. t. l l . f . 2.
W e rely on the accuracy of Mr. Turner and Dr. Withering
in making this a British species, but it is not the cartilagineus
of the last-mentioned excellent writer, which was merely
adopted from Hudson. He is said to have received the true
plant, but a short time before his death, from Fresh-water
bay in the Isle of Wight. We have been obliged to delineate
a foreign specimen. It is one of those most frequently
brought from abroad, and is often encrusted with a Madrepore.
It is remarkably horny or cartilaginous, and cannot,
by any cement that we know of, be fastened permanently to
paper.
The root is small and fibrous. Fronds much and alternately
branched, rather naked below, flat and fan-like above : their
branches compressed ; elongated and bare at the extremities.
The ultimate lateral divisions are crowded, short and obtuse,
each when fertile bearing an immersed red tubercle, at first
terminal, but at length overtopped by a point or little branch.
The colour is red, purple, greenish, brown, or tawny; so that
Gmelin’s name of versicolor is much happier than his confused
eitation of Linnaeus under that species.