I'm fascinated by this print from the
Biodiversity Heritage Library. It's an engraving based on a photo of a specimen of
ptilota plumosa. WoRMS (the World Register of Marine Species--really) tells me that it's native to the North Sea around the Netherlands. It looks part-fern, part-blood vessel, and totally weightless. The print was originally included in the compendium,
Sea Mosses: A Collector's Guide and Introduction to the Study of Marine Algae, an 1893 tome by A. E. Hervey. Not exactly light reading, and I'm willing to bet that our buddy Hervey didn't make bank off of his obsession with ethereal aquatic plants. He was probably just really in love with the natural world. (I mean, you'd have to be to spend so much time making engravings of algae. No worries, dude. I totally get it!) The incredible thing? Archivists, librarians, and lay sea moss-enthusiasts are into it, too, and have made this info available for anyone who goes looking for it. For example: I recently learned about
algaebase.org ("Public Algaebase: Listing the World's Algae."). While I might not want to wade through details about all 133,274 species, I'm psyched that someone compiled them. Isn't information cool?
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