Seaweed

“ They are feeding, apparently, upon the brown seaweed that clothes, as with a mantle, each rock and smooth stone that lies upon the shallow bottom along a gently shelving beach—making a continuous fringe which is but just submerged at low tide. In this the heads of the young ones are continually buried, but the mother eats more sparingly, and seems all-in-all happy to be thus with her family. ”

“ Among the reefs of rock upon the Australian coast, an explorer's dredge often brings up to the surface some tangled tresses of reddish seaweed, which, when placed for a while in a bucket of water, begin slowly to uncoil themselves as if endowed with animal life, and finally to swim about with a gentle tremulous motion in a mute inquiring way from side to side of the pail that contains them. ”

“ The seaweed, that harvest which, ripening without labor, is neither bought nor sold, is setting inshore under the urgings of wind and tide, and scores of farmers have crowded to the spot to gather it. ”

“ Below a certain level these are crowded out by the mussels which grow in such dense accumulations that they cling not only to the rock but to one another and to stubby brown seaweed till they are like nothing so much as pods of bees swarming about their queen. ”

“ These mats are held by means of wooden skewers forced through the body of the screen, exposing the seaweed to the direct sunshine. After becoming dry the rectangles of seaweed are piled in bundles an inch thick, cut once in two, forming packages four by seven inches, which are neatly tied and thus exposed for sale as soup stock and for other purposes.
To obtain this seaweed from the ocean small shrubs and the limbs of trees are set up in the bottom of shallow water, as seen in Fig. 4. To these limbs the seaweeds become attached, grow to maturity and are then gathered by hand. ”

“ The creature may suddenly change its mode of progression and shoot like an arrow, backward and upward. If we watch one in its passage over areas of seaweed and sand, a wonderful adaptation becomes apparent. Its colour changes continually; when near sand it is of a sombre brown hue, then blushes of colour pass over it and the tint changes, corresponding to the seaweed or patches of pink sponge over which it swims. ”

“ Often, indeed, that which is now the stem has at an earlier period formed part of the leaf, just as in some of the red seaweeds the stem of this year’s plant was last year the midrib of the leaf-like frond.
The root of a seaweed serves no other purpose in the economy of the plant than that of attaching it to the stone or rock on which it grows. In many seaweeds it is merely an expansion of the stem into the form of a cone, the lower surface of which fits closely to the rock, and cleaves to it like the “sucker” with which schoolboys lift stones. ”

“ The reason is that the outside of the seaweed is oily, slimy, or slippery, so that the water gets no hold of it. The stem and substance is also elastic and surprisingly strong, so that the daily tossing and wrenching when the tides come in and go out has no effect in tearing it away. ”

“ And every hollow of the reefs, every crevice of the rocks, is filled with life: in pools of water, clear and transparent as crystal, swim thousands of marine animals, amidst waving forests of seaweed, endless in colour and variety. Probably in no part of the English shores is so wide a field open to the inquiry of the naturalist as this portion of the coast of Cornwall. Rare plants, and rarer seaweeds, will reward his search; but, for the conchologist, very little. Scarcely a shell, even broken in half, will be gathered in a day, a perfect one hardly ever. ”

“ The farmers go down to the shore with carts and a sort of sickle. At low tide the southern shore is black with people cutting the seaweed from the rocks. The carts are used to carry it up beyond tide-mark. Men, women and young people all turn out and it's one of the sights of the island. The harvest lasts for several weeks and for the first few days there is a continual picnic with dancing and all sorts of jollifications."
"But I've often seen men gathering seaweed on the beach," said Roger. ”

“ Yet there are few objects which offer more points of interest than the seaweeds to any one who is willing to look a little way below the surface, and to spend a few hours in learning something of their modes of growth and propagation.
The name seaweed can in its strict sense be applied only to plants growing in the sea. If, however, we use it as a translation of the botanical term algæ, it becomes applicable not only to these, but to a considerable number also which are never found in salt water. ”

“ The Irish fisher-folk also gather the common brown seaweed with pods, which are really air-bladders, and serve to keep it afloat. I have many a time watched the women and children wading among the pools, cutting it from the rocks with sickles, and putting it into baskets, which they carry home on their backs; for this precious harvest of the sea is what they depend upon to make their potatoes grow well and yield a plentiful crop. There is another kind of seaweed, of a pretty purple colour, which they eat, and call it by an Irish name which means "leaf of the water." ”

“ Of these latter the most remarkable instance is to be found in the Straits of Magellan, where the seaweed is often so thickly crowded as sensibly to impede the motion of the paddles of large steamers.
Of the three great classes into which the seaweeds are divided, the brown seaweeds are, with a few exceptions, the most highly organised. In them Nature gives the first hint of the division of the plant into root, stem, and leaf, of which she elsewhere makes so frequent use. ”

“ We were thinking of backing the vessel, so as to go round about the obstacle, when all of a sudden, as I took notice of how the tendrils of the seaweed were clinging about the outrigger and curling up towards the side of the canoe, I was seized with the horrid suspicion that we had not to deal with seaweed at all, but with a monster, or maybe several, like to that terrible creature which had almost dragged me down when we were searching for eggs, as I have related. ”

“ Those seaweeds that grow along the coast, and are uncovered by the retreating tides, are well known by everyone, but by far the greater number of algæ float without anchorage of any kind. One kind that has been torn from its anchorage occurs in such enormous quantities that off the coast of America it has formed literally a floating island composed entirely of dense mats of a species of seaweed. ”

“ Seaweeds belong to a humble family in the world of plants, having no real roots, no flowers, and no real seeds. They can attach themselves to the stones or rocks. Along comes a great wave, and perhaps they are torn up; but this does not harm them, for they still live as they wash to and fro in the water, until they cling to another rock. Or they are thrown on the shore to die, or else to be washed back to sea by the next tide.
SEA-WEED FROND.
The Sea Lettuce or Green Laver is a common seaweed near the shore. ”

“ The proper home of the seaweed, however, is a rocky shore between tide-marks or just below them, and it is because the eastern coast of the United States is deficient in rocks—at least south of Cape Cod—that this is poor in algæ, compared with other regions. The seaweed has no roots, and only clings to the rock for support; shifting sand therefore would not hold it, and there are great sandy deserts under the ocean, bare of algæ, as some land regions are sandy deserts naked of terrestrial plants. ”

“ Meanwhile, the male flies off again, and again returns with more seaweed, which he delivers as before, and this he does eight times in the space of one hour and forty minutes, diving each time for the seaweed with the true cormorant leap. Sometimes the sitting bird, when she takes the seaweed from her mate, merely lets it drop on the heap, but at others she places and manipulates it with some care. ”

“ Cattle and horses that are accustomed to rough pastures, like the Scotch and Irish moors, eat seaweed and thrive on it, especially as winter fodder, and from several species are derived dishes for our own tables. The Irish moss, or carrageen,—which is not a moss at all, but a seaweed,—is the most important of these, and grows on both sides of the northern Atlantic. In England the market supply comes chiefly from the western coast of Ireland, while Massachusetts Bay gives America all that is wanted, principally the red, coral-like Chondrus crispus. ”

“ The habits of all are equally sluggish and inactive; they are very bad swimmers; those found near the coasts lie on the bottom of the sea, holding on with their arm-like pectoral fins by seaweed or stones, between which they are hidden; those of pelagic habits attach themselves to floating seaweed or other objects, and are at the mercy of wind and current. A [470] large proportion of the genera, therefore, have gradually found their way to the greatest depths of the ocean ”

“ A ship would probably have no great trouble in going through what looked like a solid mass of floating weed, each separate plant giving to her passage with but little more resistance than the water.
Peter got a bucketful of water, with a plant bearing its strange freight of life: crabs, sea-horses, pipe-fish, shrimp, and slugs.
“Aye, Timmie,” he said as he dropped the bucket over the side, “it ’s sargasso, and that means seaweed in some outlandish lingo. Why they can’t say seaweed when they mean seaweed is beyond me. ”

“ The most simple method of increase is known as vegetative reproduction, it does not occur in every kind of seaweed and is nothing more or less than the growth of a broken piece of plant into a new individual. This form of increase is not unknown higher in the plant world; begonia leaves may be induced to send forth roots and grow into new plants, many garden favourites are propagated by means of cuttings and both these methods are similar to the breaking away and growth of portions of a seaweed; the garden plants, however, are assisted by man, the seaweed does its own work. ”

“ Again, the medium in which an organism lives—whether aërial or aqueous—has an important relation with its form. A delicate seaweed, the beautifully radiating form of which is a just object of admiration as long as it is supported by its denser natural medium (the sea water) , collapses into an amorphous mass when withdrawn thence into the thin air. ”

“ Seaweed and shells make good collections, but there is no use in carrying live fish home in pails. The fun is in catching the fish, not is keeping it; and some landladies dislike having the bath-room used as an aquarium. On wet days seaweed can be stuck on cards or in a book. ”

“ It is seaweed, deliciously prepared—not the common edible seaweed, but a rare sort, fine like moss.
After bidding farewell to our generous host, we take an uphill stroll to the farther end of the village. We leave the cuttlefish behind; but before us the greater part of the road is covered with matting, upon which indigo is drying in the sun. ”

“ The eider-ducks, therefore, feed on the beds of mussels that the sea exposes at low tide, but they also, to go by appearances, devour the actual seaweed, irrespective of anything that may be growing upon it. ”

“ Even about the shores of this small island it seems as though a process of differentiation were going on, and that whilst the great majority of the eider-ducks affect a diet of shell-fish, and, therefore, haunt the broken, rocky parts where it is to be best obtained, some few prefer the seaweed growing on the smooth, shallow bottoms, which they therefore do not leave, or, at least, more frequently resort to. ”

“ Seaweed when freshly gathered is an extraordinary material for the compost pile. Like most living things from the ocean seaweeds are rich in all of the trace minerals and contain significant amounts of the major nutrients, especially potassium, with lesser amounts of phosphorus and nitrogen. Seaweeds enrich the heap, decompose very rapidly, and assist other materials to break down. Though heavy and often awkward to gather and haul, if they are available, seaweeds should not be permitted to go to waste. ”

“ To the eye at a little distance it seems substantial enough to walk upon. Patches of the weed are generally to be seen floating along the outer edge of the Gulf stream. The seaweed always tails to a steady or constant wind, and thus serves the mariner as a sort of marine anemometer, telling him whether the wind as he finds it has been blowing for some time, or whether it has just shifted, and which way. ”

“ Hauling seaweed's a big job and a bad job. We have to start from home long before daylight so as to get there and get the weed while the tide is out, and then we get back with our load about two o'clock in the afternoon; and, by the time we eat and feed the team, and get the load to the field and spread, there isn't much time left that day, especially when you've got to pile out of bed about two o'clock the next morning and hike off for another load."
"Then you use some fertilizer in addition to the seaweed? ”

“ There is generally great difficulty in persuading larvae to fix themselves when kept in a small quantity of water, which becomes over-heated in the air of a laboratory. The difficulty may be surmounted by placing colonies containing embryos, together with some clean pieces of the seaweed on which the adults are habitually found, in a vessel closed by a piece of fine muslin, and by leaving the vessel attached to a buoy or in a deep tide-pool. The larvae being without an alimentary canal, fix themselves, after a very short free life, on the seaweed. ”