On the Identity of Spongocladia and Cladopboropsis'

IN THEIR TREATMENTS of the green algae in Engler and Prantl's "Die N ariirlichen Pflanzenfamilien," Wille (1 911 : 119 ) and Printz (1927 : 282) consider 'Spongocladia Areschoug (1853 ) as a genus of questionable merit. This belief was founded upon the observation of Weber-van Bosse (1890) that examples of Struvea delicatu la which lived in association with the sponge Halichondria bore a great resemblance to Spongocladia vaucheriaeformis, the type species of the genus Spongocladia. , However; in a later 'work, W eber-van Bosse (1913 : 86) not only maintained Spongecladia but emphasized that she had not demonstrated that S. vaucheriaeformis actually was a form of Struvea delicatula living in association with a sponge, and that there consequently was no justification for the statement of Wille (loc. cit.}: , "Nachdern es von A. Weber v. Bosse nachgewiesen worden ist, dass die typische Art: S. vaucheriaeformis Aresch. nur eine durch Symbiose mit einer Spongie (Halichondria) umgebildete StruveaArt darstelle, muss auch die Stellung der 2 iibrigen Arten : Spongocladia dichotoma (Zanard. ) Murr. et Boodle, sowie S. neocaledonica Grun. als sehr zweifelhaft angesehen werden." Even though there probably is no particularly close relationship between Sp ongocladia and Struvea Sonder (1845), both of which belong to the order Siphonocladales, but to the families Siphonocladaceae and Boodleaceae, respectively, I haveon a number of oc-