E-Flora BC: Electronic Atlas of the Flora of British Columbia

Family Description:
Plants are erect, compressed but not completely flat, and branched, with an alternating series of two to six branchlets.

Species description:
Sea Comb is a highly attractive seaweed that is rosy pink to deep purplish red in color and rather translucent. It has several main erect stems up to 2 mm wide that can arise either from a discoidal holdfast or from special horizontal branches that creep along the surface of the rock on which it grows. The main axes are profusely branched, often with a somewhat zigzag pattern (subtidal individuals are not so densely branched). The penultimate branches curve outwards and bear a row of little branchlets on one side only, in a comblike fashion, and hence the common name of this species.

Male and female gametophytes are separate individuals but are basically isomorphic.

The favored habitat of Sea Comb is on rocks that are partly buried in sand, and it can also be found in tidepools. Most people are likely to encounter this species in the drift zone before they find it attached because it is much more abundant subtidally than intertidally.