Marine Plants of Hawai'i
Order Ceramiales
| Acanthophora spicifera |
 |
| Description: 1-3mm solid cylindrical branches. Covered with many
distinctive small spine-like branches. Red, brown or dark green in color but turns yellow
in bright sunlight. |
| Size: 3-20 cm high. |
| Habitat: abundant in calm shallow reef flats,
tide pools and
intertidal benches. |
| Photograph: Onekahakaha Beach Park, Hilo Hawai'i. 1996 |
| Amansia glomerata |
|
| Description:
bush-like with dark red central stipe and
flattened blades 3-7mm wide. Often covered with epiphytic crustose coralline seaweeds
giving off a pink appearance. |
| Size: grows to 15cm tall is |
| Habitat: widespread in shaded areas of almost any habitat. |
|
| Centroceras clavulatum |
|
| Description: Y shaped branches and usually dark red in appearance.
Size is 1mm diameter with two branches often curving upward, creating a
claw-like
appearance |
| Size: up to 0.5-5cm long. |
| Habitat: grows in tufts and mats in lower tidal habitats tidepools
and reef flats. |
|
| Laurencia nidifica |
|
| Description: cylindrical branches with blunt tips with a tiny pit
in each tip. Color is highly variable, often branches are rosy-straw colored with red
tips. |
| Size: main branches 1-2mm diameter and 2-20cm long. |
| Habitat: on reef flats and lower intertidal habitats along rocky
coastlines. |
|
| Martensia fragilis |
|
| Description: flat seaweed. May be completely solid and smooth
or divided into a fine lacelike network on outer portion. Variable color: pink to
orange, to bluish iridescence. |
| Size: 1-8 cm high. |
| Habitat: common in tidepools and reef flats. |
|
| Spyridia filamentosa |
|
| Description: covered with any soft fine branches creating a fuzzy
appearance red to almost white in color, but often traps fine sediment that can make it
appear many different colors. |
| Size: 0.5-2mm in diameter |
| Habitat: in calm inner areas of reef flats. Soft thick mats can
cover large areas of the reef flat. |
|
| Tolypiocladia glomerulata |
 |
| Description: filamentous red that forms loose mats from 0.3-1 cm
thick. Main branches are 0.5 mm in diameter with many smaller branches growing out from
them. In deeper water it is dark red in shallow water it appears pale red. Has distinctive
tree-like branching pattern. |
| Size: forms mats 2-5 cm wide |
| Habitat: on rubble and coral heads in subtidal habitats. |
| Photograph: Puhi Bay, Hilo Hawai'i. 1996 |
|
