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CONF E RVA limosa.
Dark-green M u d Conferva.
CRYPTOGAMIA Algce,
Gen. Char. Seeds produced within the substance of
the capillary or jointed frond, or in closed tubercles
united with it.
Spec. Char. Dark blueish green. Filaments simple,
capillary, obtuse, gelatinous, short, even, compact.
Joints indistinct, nearly as long as broad.
Syn. Conferva limosa. Dillw. Conf, t. 20. Winch
Guide, v. 2. 74.
C. gelatinosa, omnium tenerrima et minima, aquarurn
limo innascens. Dill, in Raii Syn, 477. Muse. 15.
SEN T by Mr. W. Borrer, who finds it common in running
water, growing, as Dillenius remarks, upon fine black
mud, with which it altogether forms a soft mucous mass,
to be examined .successfully only by placing it for a time in a
pan of water, before we use the microscope. Mr. Dillwyn
says, u though when first immersed, its filaments are so
thickly matted that they cannot be disentangled, yet in the
space of a night it will shoot out an immense quantity of
threads, visible to the naked eye only from their number."
These threads lie densely entangled over each other, and are
each about half an inch long, of a dark blueish green, blunt
at each end, simple, even, gelatinous; when very highly
magnified proving to consist of obsolete joints, each nearly as
long as broad. Dillenius says, “ as its parts are invisible, it
would be rash to give a figure of it,” so he leaves it unattempted,
though his figure is quoted by authors as if it existed.
Mr. Dillwyn, in his description of C.fontinalis, t. 64, expresses
a suspicion of the present being only a young state of
that species; but if our idea of the length of the joints be
correct, they should be different. See t, 2054.