Abstract: Morphological observations and rbcL sequence analyses of chondrus collected from Pingtan and Zhangpu of Fujian province, Qingdao of Shandong province and Dalian of Liaoning province were made. Total DNA were extracted from fresh or silica gel-desiccated plants and used as templates for polymerase chain reactions. Purified polymerase chain reaction products were directly sequenced. The rbcL sequences were aligned using Clustal X1.8 computer program, then used to calculate distance matrix with Kimura's two-parameter method and construct phylogenetic trees by applying neighbor-joining and Maximum Parsimony analyses using MEGA2.1 computer program. Bootstrap analyses were carried out to evaluate statistical reliability based on 500 resamplings of the data set. The results indicated three Chondrus species in China:Chondrus ocellatus, Chondrus nipponicus and Chondrus armatus. The results also suggested that Chondrus ocellatus which was described from specimen collected at Southeast seashore of China should be Grateloupia imbricata and Chondrus yendoi which was described from specimen collected from Xiao Pingdao, Dalian should be Mazzaella japonica.

Key words: Chondrus, taxonomy, rbcL