F U C U S lumbricalis.
Worm-like Fucus.
CRYPTOGAMIA Alga.
G-e n . Char. Seeds produced in cluttered tubercles,
which burft at their fummits.
Spec. Char. Frond thread-fhaped, forked, branched ;
its terminal branches pointed, equal and level;
angles of the divarications acute.
S tn . Fucus lumbricalis. Gmel. Fuel 108. t. 6. ƒ. 2.
Hudf. ed. i . 4 7 1 • Gooden, and Woodw. in Linn.
Tranf. v. 3. 204. Hull. 325.
F. faftigiatus. Hudf. 588. Light/. 930. With,
v. 4. 110.
F. furcellatus. Hudf. 589. Lightf. 932. FI. Dan.
; t. 419.
F. parvus, fegmentis praslongis teretibus acutis, et
Fucus five Alga exigua dichotomos, foliorum
fegmentis longiufculis, craffis et fubrotundis.
Raii Syn. 45.
C oM M O N on all our coafts. From the bafe of the frond,
which is fixed, as ufual, by a fmall callous dilatation to the rocks
Or ftones, feveral Ihoots are thrown out,.furnifhed with callofities
Which attach themfelves in a fimilar manner, and then produce
young plants, fo that the root is properly of the creeping kind.
Frond 4 or 6 inches high, of a very dark olive, forked repeatedly,
round, and as thick as a common packthread, fmooth/its divarications
forming acute angles, in which laft refpeCt it differs
from F. tuberculatus, t. 1%6. The branches terminate in a pair
of cylindrical, pointed, rather fwelling protuberances, in which
the feeds are copioufly lodged. This is the perfect or fructifying
ftate of the plant, and what Hudfon and Lightfoot took
for F. furcellatus of Linnaeus, which it is not, thouch Linnaeus
himfelf made the fame miftake in reading Gmelin. The
faftigiatus of our Britifh authors is the fame plant with fhort
blunter terminations of the branches, without feeds. Mr.
Woodward has both kinds on the fame root. F. faftigiatus
of Linnaeus is ftill a different fpecies.