Marineplants

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Marine Plant Photos

<turtle_grass.jpg

Sea grasses are marine flowering plants rarely exposed to air (usually only during low tides). The common sea grass species found in Caribbean coral reefs are turtle grass and eel grass. [1]

Flowering plants like sea grass have leaves, stems, and roots. Sea grasses "produce horizontal stems, or rhizomes, that attach the plants in soft sediments or to rocks." [1] Sea grass is a food staple for many creatures above and below the water (ex. sea turtles).

Sea grasses can "reproduce vegetatively by sprouting additional vertical leaves form the lengthening horizontal rhizome" or by using water currents to pollinate underwater stigma. [1]

Class Photos from the US/British Virgin Islands in the Caribbean

References

  1. 1.0 1.1 1.2 Sumich, James L. An Introduction to the Biology of Marine Life, Seventh Edition. WCB/McGraw Hill. 1999.