UC specimens and range limits for Taonia lennebackerae

• 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: From Jalama County Beach Park, Santa Barbara Co., to San Diego, including all eight Channel Islands, though no specimens have been collected between Dana Point, Orange Co. and Cardif, San Diego Co. Also Baja California, Mexico.

Status: This genus needs investigation with molecular methods to differentiate it from the genus Stypopodium and to clarify species limits (Cormacci et al. 1994).

Habitat: Growing on rock in sand-influenced areas, sometimes partially buried

Life History: Presumably an alternation of isomorphic generations

Search Sequences in GenBank

Taonia J. Agardh 1848

Thallus bladelike, with plane margins, without midrib, and with 1 to several flabellate divisions, often deeply dissected into narrow laciniae. Medulla with +/- 4 layers of large, colorless cells irregularly arranged; surface a single layer of pigmented cells, mostly in longitudinal rows. Growth in apical row of cells. Sori of sporangia and gametangia scattered or in somewhat concentric zones on both surfaces of blades, partially embedded. Sexual thalli rare, shorter than sporangial thalli.

Taonia lennebackeriae J. Ag.

J. Agardh 1894: 30; Setchell & Gardner 1925: 657; Mathieson 1966: 65.

Thalli erect, 10-30(90) cm tall; blades 10-60 mm broad, 130-180 µm thick, olive to dark brown; surface cells 20-80 µm diam., 15-50 µm long; sporangia scattered or in small groups, in vaguely concentric lines, not in definite sori; antheridial sori infrequent but conspicuous, regularly bounded by deeply pigmented cells, occurring only on plants that also bear sporangia; oogonia unknown. Adventitious thalli frequent, formed on margins and basal rhizoids.

Frequent on rocks, often partially embedded in sand, lower intertidal to upper subtidal, Channel Is., Lechuza Pt. (Los Angeles Co.), Calif., to Bahia Asuncion, Baja Calif. Type locality: "California" (probably near Santa Barbara).

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: See Distribution for more records.