Gelidium pusillum

Thallus caespitose, wiry, cartilaginous, solitary or gregarious forming dense tufts or turfs, 0.5-1.5(-2.0) cm high, yellowish-green to dark purple-red. Creeping rhizome-like axes terete, 90-150(-250) mm in diam., give rise to erect ovate-lanceolate, flat strap-shaped blades on short сylindrical stipe. Blades (550)-0.75-2 mm wide, 110-170 mm thick, tapering to blunt apices. Branching irregular, opposite or alternate. Tetrasporangia develop in swollen apical branchlets, spherical to oval, (22)-25-40 mm diam., cruciately, irregularly cruciately or sometimes tetrahedrally divided, scattered in subsurface cell layer. Firmly attached by dense tufts of unicellular rhizoids descending from ventral side of the creeping axes). Growing on dead corals, shells and rocks at low intertidal to subtidal, in sites exposed to strong wave.

Widely distributed in tropical, subtropical and temperate latitudes of Pacific, Indian and Atlantic Oceans.