Page:VCH Norfolk 1.djvu/99

From Wikisource
Jump to navigation Jump to search
This page needs to be proofread.

BOTANY

his disposal the material in his possession, as well as for making extracts of all Norfolk records from the Brit. Jungermanniæ.


MARINE ALGÆ

The coast of Norfolk, consisting almost entirely of sandy or muddy shores and having nothing that can be called 'rocks' excepting a few reefs of large stones or a hard chalk floor, produces but few growing species. Many of the weeds brought up are water-borne, their condition often showing that they have come long distances. There is also no deep water close in shore, and these causes perhaps account for the absence from our list of Laminaria digitata and L. bulbosa, both of them large and conspicuous species which could hardly have escaped notice. The spinous section of the genus Ceramium, viz. C. echiomtum, C. acanthonotum and C. ciliatum, is also absent though carefully searched for. The writer has never been able to find even a fragment of any one of them.

The late Dawson Turner of Yarmouth, in the Historia Fucorum (vol. ii. p. 84), alludes to Lilly Wigg, a Yarmouth botanist, as the discoverer of seven species of ' Fuci,' as they were then called, viz. : F. (De/esseria) hypoglossum, (D.) ruscifolius, (Laurencia) dasyphyllus^ [Rhodo- meld) subfuscus, [Chrysemema) clavellosus, (Bonnemaisoma) asparagotdes, and {Naccaria) IViggii ; and also of Ulva {Cutlerid) multijida. Conferva {Ecto- carpus) Mertensii, C. {CaUithamniori) rosea, and C. {Polysiphonia) stricta, which last is said, in the synopsis of Phycologia Britannica, to be the young state of Polysiphonia formosa. Sargassum vulgare, which, as Harvey writes,' has ' no just claim on our Flora,' recorded by Paget, has been omitted. Three other species have been recorded as only occurring once and may be regarded as ' casuals ' : Fucus canaliculatus, Cystoseira granulata and Conferva collabens. A few more species seem doubtful or uncertain, such as Cystoseira barbata., Ectocarpus brachiatus and Cladophora diffusa. The nature of our subject prevents any attempt at ' distribution ' of the species recorded. It is true that sometimes for a few days of very fine weather certain species of Algae will be found to come ashore at definite spots day after day, showing their place of growth to be on sub- marine reefs in the vicinity ; but one rough tide will alter all this, and not a single fresh specimen will occur even for weeks afterwards on the same beach. The nomenclature and arrangement followed are, so far as the writer can make them by comparison of synonyms, those of Harvey's Phycologia Britannic a?

  • Man, ed. 2, p. 15.

^ This list contains but one addition, Bryopsis hypnoides (found at Cromer last year), to that published in the Transactions of the Norfolk and Norwich Naturalists' Society (vol. iii. p. 532, 1883). The principal authorities on the subject are C. J. and James (Sir) Paget, Nat. Hist, of Yarmouth, 1 834, and a list drawn up by the Rev. G. Mumford for White's History of Norfolk, 1864. There are also various Norfolk localities mentioned in Harvey's Phycologia Britannica. 67