UC specimens and range limits for Sargassum palmeri

• 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

Notes: More common in Mexico than California. From Orange, Los Angeles, and San Diego Cos. The specimen collected by Grunow in 1884 in Santa Cruz and cited by Setchell (1937), is out of range and puzzling.

Status: A distinctive species. A specimen from San Clemente Island was included in Phillips et al. (2005), an overview of the genus Sargassum using rbcLS spacer region sequences of the rbcLS operon.

Habitat: Lowest intertidal to shallow subtidal moderately exposed reefs

Life History: Diplontic, with gametic meiosis; dioecious

Search Sequences in GenBank

Sargassum C. Agardh 1820

Thalli annual or perennial, attached by irregular, solid holdfast or by rhizoidal outgrowths from main axis. Main axis sometimes slightly differentiated into basal portion with flattened, elongate "leaves" and upper portion bearing shorter appendages, these sometimes radially arranged. "Leaves" with midrib and cryptostomata. Pneumatocysts common. Receptacles on special branches and developing in axils of "leaves." Oogonia and antheridia as in family. Both monoecious and dioecious species in Calif. flora.

Sargassum palmeri Grun.

Grunow 1915: 338; Setchell & Gardner 1925: 712. Sargassum piluliferum sensu Farlow, Anderson & Eaton, 1877-89 (1878): 102. S. dissectifolium S. & G. 1917c: 136.

Thalli perennial, 45-70 cm tall, arising from solid, rugose, more or less discoid holdfast; stipe terete, verrucose, to 1.2 m long, bearing 2-5 terete or slightly angled, alternate branches at apex, these disintegrating following liberation of gametes; primary branches producing sterile "leaves," these alternately dissected into 15-25 slightly flattened divisions 2-3 cm long; older branches, and at times ramuli, more or less spiny; numerous lateral terete secondary branches arising in axils of "leaves," longer below, shorter above; "leaves" with indistinct midrib and scattered cryptostomata, the pneumatocysts and receptacles produced in blade axils; pneumatocysts usually solitary, smooth, elliptic-spherical, 3.5-6 mm diam., on ends of pedicels as long as or longer than diam.; receptacles densely racemose, substipitate, often associated with pneumatocyst or reduced "leaf"; fertile fronds often appearing nude as "leaves" wear away; conceptacles conspicuous; plant dioecious; best developed in winter.

Occasional on rocks, low intertidal to subtidal, Santa Catalina I., Calif, to Is. San Benito, Baja Calif. Type locality: I. Guadalupe, Baja 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.