- Blue markers: specimen records
- Yellow marker: type locality, if present
- Red markers: endpoints of range from literature
Gigartina leptorhynchos J. Ag.
J. Agardh 1885: 28; Setchell & Gardner 1933: 267; Smith 1944: 279. Gigartina multidichotoma Dawson 1945b: 76; 1961a: 271. G. leptorhynchos f. caespitosa Daws. 1949b: 8.
Thalli dark brown to blackish, 10-15(40) cm tall, slender, woolly or soft, irregularly branched; main axes 0.5-1 cm diam., cylindrical to compressed; medulla delicate, anastomosing; terminal branchlets usually compressed, the last orders of branchlets congested; spines of irregular length and width, cylindrical, on margins and flattened faces of branches; tetrasporangial and spermatangial papillae acutely pointed; cystocarpic papillae tending to be flattened and foliose, occasionally dentate, each with 1-3 cystocarps, these occasionally surrounded by spines.
Common locally, saxicolous, usually below G. papillata and mixed with Cryptosiphonia woodii, lower midtidal, Humboldt Co., Calif., to I. Cedros, Baja Calif. Type locality: Santa Barbara, Calif.
N. Calif. specimens tend to be fairly uniform in size and branching pattern, and are distinguished by more or less flattened thalli; those from S. Calif. are larger and more cylindrical, with fewer laterals and with dense, long papillae and branchlets.
Excerpt from Abbott, I. A., & Hollenberg, G. J. (1976). Marine algae of California. Stanford University Press, Stanford, California. xii [xiii] + 827 pp., 701 figs.
