y S>ö t 1742 ]
Co n f e r v a diaphana.
Iied-dotted Conferva.
CRYPTOGAMIA Algae,
Ó en. Char. Seeds produced within the substance of
the capillary or jointed frond, or in closed tubercles
united with it.
Spec. Ch a r . Red, capillary, repeatedly forked, divaricated
; the ultimate divisions like a pair of forceps.
Joints short, pellucid, deep red at each end. Capsules
lateral, solitary, globose.
S yn. Conferva diaphana. L ig h tf 9 9 6 . Huds, 653.
With. v. 4. ] 39. Hull. 3 34 . Dillw. Conf. t. 38.
Dicks, H . Siec.fasc. 18. 2 5.
C. nodulosa. Huds. 60 0.
C. marina nodosa lubrica, ramosissima et elegantis-
sima rubens. Zy7/. Muse. 3 5 . t. 7. ƒ. 4 0 . R ail Syn.
6 2. t. 2. ƒ . 3. Turn, T r. o f L . Soc. v. 7. 108.
RECEIVED from the Sussex coast, by favour of Miss
Biddulph, in November last. It is frequently found in rocky
or pebbly basons on the shore, or growing; upon the larger
marine plants. ' ~ 1 &
Nothing can be more elegant than this species. Its whole
stem and branches are finer than hair, repeatedly forked and
regularly divaricated, each branch terminating in a pair of
short incurved points like pincers. , The joints are usually
twice as broad as long, but in some- branches as much the
reverse, pellucid, shining, and almost colourless, except at each
end, where the partitions are placed, in which part is a ring
of deep red, so that the plant laid on paper looks, as Lightfoot
says, like “ a branched series of small red dots.” The seeds
are in lateral, solitary, sessile, globular, red capsules, sparingly
produced.
The Dillenian synonym stands on the irrefragable authority
of Mr. Turner, nor could any less authority uphold it, because
nobody conversant with the usual merit of Dillenius-would
suppose he could draw so bad a figure, and still less that he
could be so partial to what he had done as to repeat it in his
edition of Ray. We hence learn however, what Hudson did
not discover when he copied Lightfoot’s C. diaphana, that
it is his own nodulosa, a species that would seem merely
adopted from Dillenius, had not Hudson alone described its
fruit.
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