- Blue markers: specimen records
- Yellow marker: type locality, if present
- Red markers: endpoints of range from literature
Chondria C. Agardh 1817
Thalli erect, slightly to very bushy, with several to many axes arising from common base; polysiphonous, with cortical layer thinly to completely obscuring 5 pericentral cells of polysiphonous axis. Branches cylindrical, mostly irregularly and radially alternate, sometimes opposite or whorled, with several orders of branching; smaller branches narrowed at base, with terminal tuft of branched trichoblasts, with or without terminal pit enclosing apical cell. Tetrasporangia restricted to ultimate branches, irregularly distributed, embedded just beneath cortical surface, tetrahedrally divided. Spermatangial stichidia discoid, with sterile margins, borne in clusters at branch apices. Cystocarps lateral on ultimate branches, covered by cortical layer.
Chondria nidifica Harv.
Harvey 1858: 125; Dawson 1963b: 447; Dawson & Tozun 1964: 286.
Thalli 15-20(40) cm tall, dark red, with few to many cylindrical axes arising from broad basal disks or from complex of discoid holdfasts and stolons; erect axes 1-2 mm diam., heavily corticated, mostly remotely and irregularly multifariously branched at intervals of 20-60 mm; branches terminally attenuate; the apices commonly cropped by grazing animals and regenerating new branches; smaller branchlets commonly in remote tufts along middle and upper parts of primary branches or arising from broken ends; fertile branchlets of sexual plants less fasciculate; tetrasporangia in short, tufted, slender-fusiform branchlets; spermatangial disks 400-500 µm broad; cystocarps abundant, +/- 1 mm diam., multifarious on ultimate and subultimate branchlets.
Occasional, saxicolous, midtidal to lower intertidal, Santa Cruz, Calif., to Bahia Asuncion, Baja Calif; in S. Calif., common on midtidal reefs along sand margins. Type locality: S. Calif. in vicinity of U.S.-Mexican border.
Excerpt from Abbott, I. A., & Hollenberg, G. J. (1976). Marine algae of California. Stanford University Press, Stanford, California. xii [xiii] + 827 pp., 701 figs.
