UC specimens and range limits for Maripelta rotata

• Blue markers: specimen records
• Yellow marker: type locality, if present
• Red markers: endpoints of range from literature

View map from the Consortium of Pacific Northwest Herbaria

Search Sequences in GenBank

Maripelta Dawson 1963

Thalli symmetrically peltate, arising from simple or rarely branched, cylindrical stipes. Blades membranous, simple, rotate, expanding from apices of stipes, periodically deciduous from each sympodially produced increment. Medulla of large, vacuolate cells, merging abruptly into cortex with 2 or 3 layers of much smaller cells. Tetrasporangia in small, superficial nemathecia on upper blade surface, cruciately divided. Spermatangia superficial, in pale patches. Cystocarps scattered, superficial, subhemispherical, ostiolate, lacking filamentous network between gonimoblast and pericarp.

Maripelta rotata (Daws.) Daws.

Drouetia rotata Dawson 1949b: 9. Maripelta rotata (Daws.) Daws. 1963a: 446; Hollenberg & Abbott 1966: 97.

Thalli deep rose red, with bluish sheen in life; stipes 1-4.5 cm long, 2-4 mm diam., arising from discoid holdfasts, with up to 22 successive growth increments; blade single, 3-8(12) cm diam., 300-325 µm thick, slightly depressed at center, entire; blade with single medullary layer of very large cells, this nearly equal to thickness of blade; cortex with 2 or 3 layers of much smaller cells; cystocarps 1.2-1.4 mm diam., slightly rostrate.

Rare, on subtidal rocks (to 30 m), Carmel and Diablo Submarine Canyons and Santa Catalina I. (type locality), Calif., to Pta. Eugenio, Baja Calif., frequent at 15-30 m under kelp canopy off La Jolla, Calif.

Excerpt from Abbott, I. A., & Hollenberg, G. J. (1976). Marine algae of California. Stanford University Press, Stanford, California. xii [xiii] + 827 pp., 701 figs.