Ecklonia cava subsp. kurome (Okamura)

Belleza, Dominic Franco C., Tateishi, Hiroto, Tanimae, Shin-Ichiro, Kobayashi, Taishun, Aota, Tomoyuki, Urasawa, Toshiki & Nishihara, Gregory N., 2025, An annotated list of brown seaweeds (Phaeophyceae) from Nakadori Island (northern Goto Islands, Nagasaki, Japan), Phytotaxa 694 (1), pp. 1-24 : 17

Ecklonia cava subsp. kurome (Okamura) Akita, Hashimoto, Hanyuda, & Kawai, 2020

Japanese name: クロメ (kurome)

Basionym: Ecklonia kurome Okamura, 1927

Lectotype locality: — Kanayama , Wakayama Prefecture, Japan

Description and remarks: —Thalli of specimens are 12–26 cm tall, with blades attached to cylindrical stipes which have a length of 1–2.5 cm and 1.5–3 cm in diameter. Holdfasts are rhizomatous and attached to rocky substrates. Half of the specimens have wrinkled blades while the others are smooth. All specimens were collected in May to July 2018, from boulders 1–2 m deep, in a semi-sheltered part of Yokoura. This species has not been observed at Yokoura since 2019. However, this species still persists in Naname and has been collected even until early-mid summer.

This species was previously known as E. kurome until the change was proposed based on multigene molecular phylogeny ( Akita et al. 2020). Their study revealed that E. cava , E. kurome and E. stolonifera are all similar morphospecies and are genetically similar and therefore recognized to be subspecies to E. cava . The presence of wrinkled or smooth blades, previously used as distinguishing features separating E. cava and E. kurome was found to be unreliable and possibly caused by environmental conditions or plant age ( Arai et al. 1997).

Materials examined: —18ECS1-36 (1 to 14)

Order Sporochnales

Family Sporochnaceae