Champia compressa Harvey

Order Family    Genus Rhodymeniales Champiaceae Champia

Champia compressa Harvey

Characteristics

The highly branched plant are small, errect forming clusters, 3-5 cm in height; thalli are highly mucilaginous and in colour; fronds are articulated, compressed to flattened and vary in width from 3-5 mm; branching is more or less bupinnate in the lower portion, bearing irregular to verticillate in the upper region; branches are distinctly attenuated at the point of origin and expanded above with obtuse tips. The barrel shaped segments are short, 1-1.5 mm long and 3-5 mm broad; transverse section of the hollow compressed thallus shows an one layered wall of more or less squarish to barrel-shaped cells, 49-60 um x 44-53 um and with a thick mucilagenous sheath; few smaller cortical cells 32-37 um in diameter are seen here and there; vertical filament are mostly unbranched, uniserriate and run close to the walls or at times lie free in the cavity also; cells of the filament are 11-19 um wide; gland cells arising from the vertical filament are 8-15 um in diameter, thin walled and with dense content; tetrasporic and cystocarpic plants are morphologically identical; tetrasporangia occur aggregated in well marked transverse bands both on the main axis and branches; tetrasporangia are ovoid and 80-100 um x 70-75 um; tetraspores are tetrahedrally arranged, pyramidal in shape and 55-75 um in diameter; promonenly protruding cystocarps are sub-conical in shape with a distinct ostiole and are up to 1500 um long and 1200 um broad; one to three cystocarps are seen on each segment; carpospores are pyriform in shape, produced in terminal carposporangia and measure 44-70 um x 30-37 µm.