Cell of Pleurotaenium trabecula showing smooth-walled semicells provided with parietal chloroplast bands that contain many globose pyrenoids.

Cell dimensions (L x B): ca 370 x 35 µm

 


Desmid of the month
May 2005

Pleurotaenium trabecula

The genus Pleurotaenium is characterized by elongate cylindric cells (circular in top view) which usually are but slightly constricted in the middle (so with a shallow sinus). The chloroplast is in the form of longitudinal, parietal bands, leaving space to a big, globular vacuole at the cell apex.

In the Netherlands, by far the most common species is Pleurotaenium trabecula, to be encountered in various kinds of meso-eutrophic water bodies, ranging from slightly acidic to slightly alkaline. Pl. trabecula is marked by a completely smooth cell wall and by semicells that use to be a bit swollen in the midregion.

Detail of young semicells of a recently divided mother cell exhibiting big terminal vacuoles and crumpled parts of stripped-off primary cell walls (see webpage ‘Shedding of the primary cell wall’).

Zygospore of Pleurotaenium trabecula. Found in fen area 'Buitengoor' (Mol, Belgium), summer 2014.