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Udotea orientalis A.Gepp & E.Gepp

Reference
Siboga-Exped.Monogr. 62:119-120, Pl. I: Figs 1, 4, Pl. VI: Figs 47-48 (1911)
Conservation Code
Not threatened
Naturalised Status
Native to Western Australia
Name Status
Current

Scientific Description

Habit and structure. Thallus pale olive-green to grey-green, to 5 cm tall, with a small fibrous holdfast and a simple stipe 5–12 mm long and 0.8–1.5 mm diam., broadening gradually into a simple cuneate or flabellate blade 20–30 mm long and 12–30 mm wide, the blade surface with visible siphons and with or without faint concentric markings. Stipe and blade multistratose. Stipe with primary siphons 50–60 μm diam., bearing branched digitate lateral appendages forming a pseudocortex. Blades composed of dichotomously divided (at intervals of 3–4 mm) siphons 35–40 μm diam., lacking lateral appendages (except near the stipe/blade transition), with constrictions above the dichotomies at regular unequal distances from the division, also with randomly located constrictions.

Distribution. Widespread in the tropical Indo-west Pacific, including Qld. In W.A. known from the Dampier Archipelago and the southern Kimberley coast.

Habitat. Epilithic in the subtidal.

[After Huisman, Algae of Australia: Mar. Benthic Algae of North-western Australia, 1. Green and Brown Algae 151 (2015)]

John Huisman and Cheryl Parker, 3 August 2021

Distribution

IMCRA Regions
Kimberley, Pilbara (nearshore).
Local Government Areas (LGAs)
Derby-West Kimberley, Karratha.