Gloeocapsa

Gloeocapsa is a genus of cyanobacteria (blue-green algae) in which a number of usually spherical cells are enclosed in a thick sheath of mucilage.

Cells form new mucilaginous sheaths and as they divide, the mucilage of the whole colony usually becomes multiply lamellate. Such sheaths within sheaths are more conspicuous in some species than in others, and those species in which the sheaths are scarcely lamellate have been separated off into a separate genus, Gloeocapsopsis.