Lemanea

Genus of algae

Lemanea is a genus of freshwater red algae, in the order Batrachospermales. Both species are considered to be widespread in the northern hemisphere. Although placed in the Rhodophyta (red algae) it in fact is green in colour.

Lemanea is a stiff bristle like branched or unbranched alga similar to a coarse horsehair. Close inspection show it to have small swellings at more or less regular intervals along its length. It grows to 40 cm in length, in bunches in freshwater. It is blue green to olive in colour when young. The asexual stage is a row of single celled branched filaments.

The genus name of Lemanea is in honour of Dominique Sébastien Léman (1781 1829), who was an Italian French botanist (interested in Pteridology, Algology and Mycology) and also Mineralogy. The genus was circumscribed by Jean Baptiste Bory de St. Vincent in Ann. Mus. Hist. Nat. (Paris) vol.12 on page 178 in 1808.

The genus is considered to be cosmopolitan in the northern hemisphere.

John, D. M., Whitton, B. A. and Brook, A. J. (Ed.) 2002. The Freshwater Algal Flora of the British Isles. Cambridge University Press. Morton, O. 1978. Lemanea in the north of Ireland. Irish Naturalists' Journal 19: 205. Sawers, W. 1854. List of algae gathered in the north of Ireland. Naturalist, Morris 4: 254 257. West, G. S. and Fritsch, F. E. 1927. A Treatise on the British Freshwater Algae. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge. [Facsimile edition printed in 1968 as Vol. 3 of Bibliotheca Phycologia. J. Cramer, Lehre.]