CONFERVA fracta.
Broken Divaricated Conferva.
CRYPTOGAMIA Alga.
Gen. Char. Seeds produced within the substance of
the capillary or jointed frond, or in closed tubercles
united with it.
Spec. Char. Green, much branched and entangled.
Branches scattered, divaricated. Joints twice as
long as broad, cylindrical; at length elliptical.
Capsules roundish, sessile.
Syn. Conferva fracta. FI. Dan. t. 946. Dillw. Conf.
t. 14. Syn. 65. n. 97.
C. vagabunda. Linn. Sp. PI. 1637. Huds. 601.
With. v. 4. 139. Hull. 334.
C. divaricata. Roih. Catal. v. 1. 179. t. S .f. 1.
C. marina trichoides, Ian® instar expansa. Dill,
in Raii Syn. 60. J\lusc. 30. t. 5. f . 32,
U lL L E N IU S had this Conferva first from Sussex, where
Mr. W . Borrer finds it common in marshes, pools and ditches;
nor does it occur near the sea only, Mr. Dillwyn having observed
the same species in the Lock fields near London, bearing
lateral globular sessile tubercles or capsules. These we
have not met with. To this author we are obliged for settling
the Linnaean synonym, which depends entirely on Dillenius,
and which we should now have restored, as the true specific
name, had it been better latin, or more expressive, than it is.
In such cases convenience, sense and propriety, may surely,
at the discretion of fit judges, take place of. rigid authority.
The filaments float, in densely entangled masses, on the surface
of salt-water ditches, or stagnant pools of any kind. They
accord, in general resemblance, with C.flexuosa, 1 .1944, and
Jlavescens, t. 2088, but the branches are not regularly two-
ranked, nor the joints of so long a proportion. The whole
plant is very much divaricated, somewhat rigid, and many of
the joints following one another in different parts of the main
branches, become tumid and elliptical, as if pregnant with seeds,
or perhaps with what is equivalent to pollen, if we may form
any guess, by analogy, from t. 2337. (JcbiBiijiu(‘l'e/ieA(</
2338.