- Blue markers: specimen records
- Yellow marker: type locality, if present
- Red markers: endpoints of range from literature
Illustration from DeCew's Guide to the Seaweeds of British Columbia, Washington, Oregon, and Northern California
Microcladia Greville 1830
Thalli erect, without creeping basal portions. Branching of 5-7 orders, usually in 1 plane, distichous, regularly alternate or appearing pectinate. Branches terete to strongly compressed, the apices forcipate; cells large, uniseriate, uninucleate, the plant corticated throughout by irregular cells of various sizes. Tetrasporangia tetrahedrally divided, embedded in cortical cells, borne on branches of last 3 orders. Spermatangia in continuous layers on ultimate branches. Procarps with 2 carpogonial branches on each supporting cell. Mature cystocarps globose, all cells of cystocarp becoming carposporangia; cystocarps with or without involucre.
Microcladia coulteri Harv.
Harvey 1853: 209; Smith 1944: 329.
Thalli 35-40 cm tall, deep rose, usually drying to black, with embedded holdfasts; branches with percurrent axis bearing 5-7 orders of branching; branching regularly alternate, distichous; cortical cells with internal rhizoids in lower portions; cystocarps on final orders of branches, several frequently on 1 branch, appearing seriately, maturing from base to apex, each surrounded by involucre of 3-6 corticated, sterile branchlets, these developing as in Ceramium.
Abundant epiphyte on large red algae, but occasionally on large brown algae, midtidal to subtidal (10 m), Vancouver I., Br. Columbia, to Baja Calif. Type locality: probably Monterey, Calif.
The Pacific Coast species of Microcladia share some characters, including the number of carpogonial branches, with the type species of the genus, M. glandulosa, and other characters (e.g. cortical rhizoids) with Campylaephora from the Northwest Pacific. Until details in these genera are studied, critically evaluated, and compared with the same characters in Ceramium, no definite position can be taken on the assignment of the Pacific Coast species.
Excerpt from Abbott, I. A., & Hollenberg, G. J. (1976). Marine algae of California. Stanford University Press, Stanford, California. xii [xiii] + 827 pp., 701 figs.
