''Chara braunii'' is one of only several ecorticate species of the genus '' Chara'' occurring in Europe and the only species without cortication known from

Poland Poland, officially the Republic of Poland, is a country in Central Europe. It extends from the Baltic Sea in the north to the Sudetes and Carpathian Mountains in the south, bordered by Lithuania and Russia to the northeast, Belarus and Ukrai ...

.Jacek Urbaniak, "Distribution of ''Chara braunii'' Gmellin 1826 (''

Charophyta Charophyta () is a paraphyletic group of freshwater green algae, called charophytes (), sometimes treated as a division, yet also as a superdivision. The terrestrial plants, the Embryophyta emerged deep within Charophyta, possibly from terres ...

'') in Poland",
link
retrieved November 30, 2015), ''Acta Societatis Botanicorum Polonae'', vol. 76, no. 4, pp. 313-320, 2007 ''Chara braunii'' is the first Charophyceae for which the whole nuclear genome has been sequenced and published. The findings of ''C. braunii'' in southern Poland only in fish ponds may have suggested that this species is restricted only to this type of ecosystem, but this is not true.

Description

The plant is small to medium size. Fresh green to brownish green when found in the muddy bottom. Transparent and richly branched. Plants are entirely ecorticate (i.e., without cortex). The main axis slender up to 1200 μm in diameter. The stipulodes (single cell organs present in one or more rows in the

branchlet A branch, also called a ramus in botany, is a stem that grows off from another stem, or when structures like veins in leaves are divided into smaller veins. History and etymology In Old English, there are numerous words for branch, includ ...

s of Chara) occur in a single whorl and are well developed. Branchlets 6-10 in a whorl, straight and occasionally incurved; segments 4-6, the last one often reduced, with 1 or more small end cells forming tiny terminal corona. Bracteoles (leaf-like structures) slightly longer than the

oospore An oospore is a thick-walled sexual spore that develops from a fertilized oosphere in some algae, fungi, and oomycetes. They are believed to have evolved either through the fusion of two species or the chemically induced stimulation of mycelia ...

. The species is

monoecious Monoecy (; adj. monoecious ) is a sexual system in seed plants where separate male and female cones or flowers are present on the same plant. It is a monomorphic sexual system comparable with gynomonoecy, andromonoecy and trimonoecy, and contras ...

and richly fertile

oogonia An oogonium (: oogonia) is a small diploid cell which, upon maturation, forms a primordial follicle in a female fetus or the female (haploid or diploid) gametangium of certain thallophytes. In the mammalian fetus Oogonia are formed in lar ...

are situated above the antheridia. The oospore is dark brown or black.

Distribution

The species have a

cosmopolitan distribution In biogeography, a cosmopolitan distribution is the range of a taxon that extends across most or all of the surface of the Earth, in appropriate habitats; most cosmopolitan species are known to be highly adaptable to a range of climatic and en ...

between 65 deg. N and 35 deg. S. Ch. braunii has been placed on a "red" list of endangered algae in Poland in the category "indeterminate", but probably simply because of poor investigation of the species in Poland. In Poland, the species was found exclusively in

fish pond A fish pond or fishpond is a controlled pond, small artificial lake or retention basin that is stocked with fish and is used in aquaculture for fish farming, for recreational fishing, or for ornamental purposes. Fish ponds are a classical g ...

s, and it was suggested that C. braunii is limited to only this kind of

ecosystem An ecosystem (or ecological system) is a system formed by Organism, organisms in interaction with their Biophysical environment, environment. The Biotic material, biotic and abiotic components are linked together through nutrient cycles and en ...

. However findings in other parts of the world show that this is not true.

References

External links

{{Authority control Charophyta