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| sea pens text index | photo index |
| Phylum Cnidaria > Class Anthozoa > Subclass Alcyonaria/Octocorallia > Order Pennatulacea |
| Flowery
sea pen Family Veretillidae* updated Aug 10 Where seen? This beautiful colony of flowery polyps is often seen on our Northern shores, mainly at night. On soft silty sand among seagrasses. Features: Colony 15-20cm long. Long, sausage-like primary polyp. No leaf-like structures. The secondary polyps emerge directly from the primary polyp. The secondary polyp has a long body column (1-2cm) topped with 8 long branched tentacles. It is usually white at the tips, but the body column colour may match the colour of the primary polyp. Colours seen include white, maroon, purple and orange. When exposed at low tide, the secondary polyps are retracted leaving only the fat central stalk that flops over on the ground so that it looks like a limp sausage on the sand. Sometimes confused with other sausage-shaped animals. Here's more on how to tell apart sausage-shaped animals. Pen pals: Sometimes, tiny transparent shrimp may be seen among the tentacles of the sea pen. The shrimps are often found in pairs and often all you can see of them are their eyeballs! |
 Beting Bronok, Aug 05  Changi, Jul 02 |
 An uprooted sea pen with flowery secondary polyps retracted. Changi, Jun 05 |
 Secondary polyps with long columns and eight branched tentacles. |
Flowery sea pens on Singapore Shores
 Changi, Jul 04 |
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 Changi, Jul 05 |
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 Changi, Jun 05 |
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more photos of flowery sea pens on Singapore shores
part 1 | part 2 | part 3 | part 4
*Species are difficult to positively identify without close examination.
On this website, they are grouped by external features for convenience of display
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Links
References
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IKAN-Unterwasserachiv, Frankfurt. 305 pp.|
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