UC specimens and range limits for Halymenia californica

• 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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Halymenia C. Agardh 1817

Thalli erect, bladelike (in Calif. species), 1 or more blades arising from discoid holdfast. Blades entire, sometimes divided or lobed, occasionally with small, proliferous branches. Cortex of few to many rows of branched cells. Medulla of loosely interwoven, periclinally directed filaments, the 1 or 2 rows just beneath cortex usually stellate in shape; a few to many anticlinally directed filaments running perpendicularly from inner face of 1 cortex to that of opposite cortex. Tetrasporangia cruciately divided, scattered, embedded in outer cortex. Spermatangia in small, whitish sori, irregular in shape on thallus surface. Carpogonial branches and auxiliary-cell branches separated from each other, the auxiliary-cell cluster with moderate internal branching. Cystocarp relatively small, lying in outer medulla, with few sterile filaments surrounding it. All cells of gonimoblast becoming carposporangia; carpostome present; no fusion of basal cells to provide stalk (as occurs in Prionitis or Grateloupia).

Halymenia californica Smith & Hollenb.

Smith & Hollenberg 1943: 216; Smith 1944: 243; Abbott 1967a: 140 (incl. synonymy).

Thalli 20-70 cm tall, dark rose red; blades 4-18 cm wide, broadly lanceolate, sometimes falcate, occasionally branched from short, broad stipes; bases cuneate; blade 450-500 µm thick; outer cortex of 3 or 4 layers; inner cortex (or outer medulla) of 1 or 2 rows of stellate or irregular filaments; medulla traversed from cortex to cortex by many anticlinal filaments 2-4 µm wide, with few to a moderate number of periclinal filaments; tetrasporangia scattered over surface of thallus; spermatangial sori continuous; gonimoblasts hemispherical; carpostome present.

One of the most common subtidal (8-35 m), saxicolous, foliose algae, Hope I., Br. Columbia, south through Calif. to Gulf of Calif.; frequently cast ashore. Type locality: Pacific Grove, 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.