UC specimens and range limits for Smithora naiadum

• 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

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Illustration from DeCew's Guide to the Seaweeds of British Columbia, Washington, Oregon, and Northern California

Smithora Hollenberg 1959

Thalli host-specific epiphytes, with several to many blades arising from basal cushion. Blades monostromatic, with short, narrow attachment lacking rhizoidal filaments. Chloroplast single, stellate, with single pyrenoid. Asexual reproduction by monospores released from small, mostly marginal, wartlike sori, possibly also by characteristic deciduous, terminal to lateral sori, these periodically shed as gelatinous masses of cells and giving rise to new basal cushions. "Spermatangia" relatively large, cut off outwardly as single cells from pigmented cells of localized distromatic portions of blades; identity and function of these and corresponding female structures, if any, uncertain.

Smithora naiadum (Anders.) Hollenb.

Porphyra naiadum Anderson 1892: 148; Hus 1902: 212; Smith 1944: 169. Smithora naiadum (Anders.) Hollenberg 1959: 3. S. naiadum var. australis Dawson 1953a: 15.

Thallus purplish-red to deep purple, with 5-30 blades 10-50 mm tall arising from multicellular, pulvinate, perennial bases; young blades obovate, the older blades broadly cuneate, with slender, stipelike attachment; blades monostromatic, 25-30 µm thick in vegetative parts; cells isodiametric, irregularly angular, 15-20 µm diam. in surface view; reproduction as described for genus.

Locally abundant in season, epiphytic exclusively on Phyllospadix and Zostera, low intertidal, N. Br. Columbia to I. Magdalena, Baja Calif. Type locality: probably Farallon Is., Calif.

The occurrence of the several types of reproductive structures varies greatly in different parts of the range. Two forms are recognized by Hus. Forma major, with blades to 10 cm long, occurs on Zostera mostly in more sheltered water; common from N. Br. Columbia to C. Calif., it seems not to produce the marginal, wartlike sori often present on blades of forma minor, which occurs mostly on Phyllospadix in more exposed areas. Forma minor is much smaller, especially in S. Calif. and Mexico, and usually lacks the deciduous sori and wartlike sori.

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