Algal classification—An aid to improved industrial utilization

Abstract

Significant commercial exploitation of some of our most primitive plant forms, the marine algae, is a relatively recent development. Records, rumor, and folklore particularly from the Orient provide evidences of sea plant utilization back into the shadows of history. For the most part, these uses involved the gross plant structure as a food or food accessory and even as today it is the macroscopic algal forms that were favored. The mass of easily harvested wild forms predominate in two Divisions, the Rhodophyta and Phaeophyta. Direct use of sea plants as food involves many more types than any other application. Shore dwellers have probably, at one time or another, tried every likely looking plant, and even some not so likely looking, as an addition to the pot. Tabulation of those that at one time or another have graced local produee markets includes members of the red, brown, and green algae involving 195 species in 76 genera. The red and brown sea plants predominate as one would expect from their usual size. Only in the Orient where the peoples have the proper combination of patience and palate does a sizable market still exist. It is also in the Orient that the closest approach is reached to sea plant cultivation, where artificial obstacles are placed to support increased natural growths of Porphyra tenera. Farmers along the shore have probably always used drift weed and littoral forms, predominantly rockweeds and Laminariales, for soil conditioning or manuring, and stock feed supplements. At one time when kelp burning for iodine recovery was an important industry, the French government was compelled to control this seashore resource so as to provide an