UC specimens and range limits for Sporochnus pedunculatus

• 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: Apparently cosmopolitan in the Atlantic, Australia, and New Zealand; in California, frequent at Santa Catalina Island, also at Santa Barbara and San Clemente islands; not collected on the mainland. Also Baja California, Mexico.

Status: This species was originally identified as S. apodus Harvey, but was compared with S. pedunculatus collected by E.Y. Dawson in Bahia de Los Angeles, Baja California, Mexico (Mower & Widdowson 1969). I consider this name provisional; this species should be examined with molecular methods to clarify its relationship to specimens in other parts of the world and with other species in the genus. It might be an introduction to California.

Habitat: Soft sediment or sandy habitats in sheltered areas

Life History: Gametophytes microscopic, filamentous, branched, monoecious or dioecious, oogamous (Caram 1965).

Search Sequences in GenBank

Sporochnus C. Agardh 1817

Thallus alternately branched, cylindrical to slightly flattened, with inner layer of large, colorless cells and outer layer of pigmented cells. Meristem subterminal on terminally enlarged branchlets, with terminal tuft of filaments. Unangia lateral, on special branchlets at base of terminal filaments of lateral branches.

Sporochnus pedunculatus (Huds.) C. Ag.

Fucus pedunculatus Hudson 1778: 587; Turner 1811: 126. Sporochnus pedunculatus (Huds.) C. Agardh 1817: xii; Kützing 1859: 34; Taylor 1928: 114; 1960: 253. S. apodus sensu Mower & Widdowson 1969: 75.

Thallus erect, with axis to 50 cm tall, flexible, golden brown in life, drying to dark brown, bearing branches in an irregular spiral, these appearing alternate in pressed material; branches cylindrical, 0.5-1.2 mm diam., bearing numerous short-determinate branchlets terminating in tufts of dark brown, monosiphonous filaments; fertile branchlets at first subsessile in older specimens; with stipe 0.2 mm diam, and to 2.5 mm long; fertile portions cylindrical, 0.5 mm diam., and to 2 mm long, composed of slender, branching paraphyses with globose end cells lateral and unangia to 58 µm long.

Frequent on rocks, reefs, or pebbles, subtidal (11-13 m), Santa Catalina I., Calif., to Scammon Lagoon, Baja Calif. Widely distributed in N. Atlantic; also reported from Brazil. Type locality: England.

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

Notes: No longer common; seasonal.