#macrocystis pyrifera

[montereybayaquarium]

5 fun facts about giant kelp

Holdfast to your favorite fronds and wrap yourself up in five fun facts about the magnificent macroalgae, giant kelp!

[fungusqueen]

Look at this tiny Brittle star crawling on Giant Kelp (Macrocystis pyrifera). I woke up before sunrise to catch this low tide last week

[gaynaturalistghost]

Notes and a drawing of Ivy with Phaeophyceae (brown algae), I learned a lot and got down a Macrocystis rabbit hole. I’ve seen microcystis in my own water samples but that’s cyanobacteria if I remember right. Not the same, but the names make me feel like I’ve collected both things, a match set. What more is there to know

(A lot)

I wanted to see how tall M. pyrifera would be if it were stretched out like a tree (and needed a tree-person ratio) bc other kelp forest pics were too close-up I wanted to see how small that was. Also the way it grows/develops leaves is so good. Love it.

Then went “oh shoot,” that’s pretty deep. I wonder if there were bigger paleo (?) kelp forests. But yeah diving/living that deep does weird stuff with nitrogen so I wonder if that matters at all to them?

[tenth-sentence]

I do not suppose the stem of any other plant attains so great a length as three hundred and sixty feet, as stated by Captain Cook.

"Journal of Researches into the Natural History and Geology of the Countries Visited During the Voyage of H.M.S. Beagle Round the World, 1832-36" - Charles Darwin

[terranlifeform]

[gaiagalatea]

(via GIPHY)

[lovecraftsgarden]

Macrocystis pyrifera

Giant Kelp

“Those Old Ones were gone now, inside the earth and under the sea; but their dead bodies had told their secrets in dreams to the first men, who formed a cult which had never died.” -Lovecraft, The Call of Cthulhu

(via)

[tt-squid]

this is mostly Macrocystis pyrifera