Thursday, October 29, 2015

Underwater flower garden

When I see the word, "worms", my stick-in-the-mud brain still jumps to the picture of a soft, pink, eyeless, squirmy tube; the earthworm of my gardens. I still have to remind it of worms with eyes and jaws, worms with legs; a multitude of legs, worms with long conveyor belt tentacles, worms with lids, worms that conduct imaginary orchestras. And worms that look like flowers.

Maroon, peach, green, pink. Feather duster worms, growing downward, under the dock.

Pale green and blueberry "flowers".

My Marine Life Encyclopedia has 49 pages of worms, almost 300 different species of marine worms in this area, including 8 species of feather duster worms, like these, from half an inch tall up to about 10 inches.

I'm not sure which species these are. The largest are about 6 to 8 inches tall, as far as I can tell without diving to measure them. The community may be a mixed grouping of the Split-branch feather duster (8 inches, solid colour plume), the Vancouver feather duster (10 inches, banded crown) or the polymorph feather duster (7 inches, variable crown); and the whole bunch of them have tiny eyes, looking back at me.

1 comment:

  1. By looking at them you would never guess worms. - Margy

    ReplyDelete

I'm having to moderate all comments because Blogger seems to have a problem notifying me. Sorry about that. I will review them several times daily, though, until this issue is fixed.

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