Rodriguezella strafforelli

The Natural Sciences Cabinet of the Athenaeum of Maó has in its archives, among others, the collection of algae by Joan Joaquim Rodríguez Femenias (1839-1905), businessman, politician, and botanist from Menorca, Founder of modern phycology in the western Mediterranean region through his work on algae in the Balearic Islands. The importance of this collection is not found in the number of species (from Menorca -227- and exotic 1021-) as in the study and classification of them made by Rodríguez Femenias and that served other first-line algologists. Throughout his life, he maintained correspondence and exchange of specimens with the main phycologists of his time, for this reason, we find in his collection algae from all over the world. In 1979, Juan Antonio Seoane Camba, professor of botany at the University of Barcelona’s faculty of pharmacy, and his then interns, now doctors of botany, Amelie Gomez Garreta and Maria Antonia Ribera Siguan, made the cataloging and ordering of the set of algae given by the family of Rodríguez Femenias in 1906. This specimen of Gelidium Latifolium was collected by J.J. Rodriguez Femenias on the 24th of June 1897, in Mahon Harbour (Menorca), Spain.