UC specimens and range limits for Bornetia californica

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

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Bornetia Thuret 1855

Thalli tufted, of subdichotomous to unilaterally branched, uncorticated filaments. Cells elongate, cylindrical, multinucleate. Reproductive structures borne laterally on shortened branches. Tetrasporangia borne in clusters, sessile on adaxial or on both abaxial and adaxial surfaces of incurved, short, lateral branches, these terminated by 1 or 2 forcipate involucral cells. Spermatangia borne on similar branch systems, in oblong, densely branched heads placed in axils of dichotomy of sterile cells, involucrate. Fertile female axis of 5 or 6 cells. Procarp of 1 4-celled carpogonial branch and 1 or more pseudocarpogonia (resembling short, sterile, carpogonial branches) arising from sterile cells; fusion cell formed after fertilization and involving supporting cell, auxiliary cell, and lower cells of gonimoblast. Gonimoblasts with terminal, pyriform carpospores; involucre formed from basal and lower 2 cells of fertile axis, of large incurved cells surrounding and overtopping gonimoblast.

Bornetia californica Abb.

Abbott 1971a: 349. Bornetia secundiflora sensu Setchell 1901: 125.

Thalli dark carmine, tufted, saxicolous or epizoic; lowest cells horizontal and slightly modified as creeping filaments; erect filaments to 10 cm tall with few dichotomies; cells 350-500 µm (mostly 500 µm) diam. through midsections, 2 or more times as long, 2-3 mm long toward base; dichotomies frequently Y-shaped; tetrasporangia and spermatangial clusters on repeatedly branched, short laterals of 3 orders, each tetrasporangium sessile, 78-100 µm diam., attached to all 4 surfaces of branchlet cell; spermatangial heads oblong, densely branched, each spermatangium 2-35 µm diam; fusion cell large and conspicuous; gonimoblasts large, with enclosing involucral cells.

Infrequent, saxicolous or epizoic, low intertidal to subtidal (to 6 m), C. Calif. from San Mateo Co. to San Luis Obispo Co. Type locality: Pescadero Beach (San Mateo Co.), Calif.

Very similar in external morphology to some specimens of Griffithsia pacifica, whose cells, however, are usually more barrel-shaped or are wider at the top than basally, and whose dichotomies are not Y-shaped.

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