Lamprothamnium macropogon
Common name
Stonewort
Family
Characeae
Flora category
Non-vascular – Native
Brief description
Small branched spiny submerged plant usually growing in brackish water.
Distribution
Indigenous. New Zealand: North, South and Chatham Islands. Also Australia.
Habitat
Brackish water, coastal lakes and lagoons.
Detailed description
Aquatic, submerged, macro-algae. Fox-tail tips, and spinose appearance. Downward facing spine-like cells are clustered on the stem at the base of the branchlet whorl, and shorter, outward facing spines present on the branchlets . Branchlets are not forked, but spine-like cells are obvious at junctions between branchlet cells. Stem and branchlets are comprised of strings of large single cells that are easily punctured, with central stems anchored in the sediment by colourless rhizoids. Plant is monoecious, with orange antheridia and pale oogonia on the same plant and with fruiting bodies dispersed over the upper stem portions or in a whorl around the stem above the branchlets.
Similar taxa
Differs from Chara fibrosa, which has corticated stems covered in spines and occurs in freshwater, while Lamprothamnium is uncorticated and spines on the stem are restricted to immediately around the branchlet whorl.
Fruiting
Produces large (>500µm long) black oospores that are round in transverse section. Oospore has 10-12 sinistral spiralling ridges, granular membrane of coarse round grains.
Propagation technique
Fragments or oospores.
References and further reading
Broady, P.A.; Flint, E.A.; Nelson, W.A.; Cassie Cooper, V.; de Winton, M.D.; Novis P.M. Chapter 23 Twenty –Three :Phyla Chlorophyta and Charophyta (Green Algae). In: New Zealand Inventory of Biodiversity (Volume 3), Gordon, D.P. (Ed), Canterbury University Press, 616pp.
Casanova, M.T.; de Winton, M.D.; Karol, K.G.; Clayton J.S. (2007). Nitella hookeri A. Braun (Characeae, Charophyceae) in New Zealand and Australia: implications for endemism, speciation and biogeography. Charophytes (1): 2-18
de Winton, M.D.; Dugdale, A.M.; Clayton, J.S. (2007). An identification key for oospores of the extant charophytes of New Zealand. New Zealand Journal of Botany:463-476
Wood RD, Mason R 1977. Characeae of New Zealand. New Zealand Journal of Botany 15: 87–180.