Sea grasses (or seagrass ) are flowering plants which live in the sea. They come from four plant families in the order Alismatales . They are monocotyledons which grow in marine , fully saline environments .

Sea grasses evolved from plants which went back to the ocean 70 to 100 million years ago, in the long, warm, Cretaceous period .

Sea grass is a key part of continental shelf ecosystems where phytoplankton produce carbonate sediment . This kind of ecosystem occurs in subtropical places like Florida Bay , and around Bermuda . Sea grass beds often contain many species from various phyla . Apparently, seagrass herbivory is a highly important link in the food chain . Many species feed on sea grasses, such as green turtles , dugongs , manatees , fish, geese, swans, sea urchins and crabs .

The surface of the seagrass is the place where Melobesia , a small alga , makes chalk as a by-product of its metabolism. That is not the only chalk-producing organism in the seagrass beds. ^[1]

Largest plant [ change | change source ]

A huge bed of seagrass has been found off the coast of Western Australia .

Researchers collected shoots from the bay and looked at 18,000 genetic markers. It is all from the same plant , and covers about 77 square miles (200 square kilometres). ^[2]

Bibliography [ change | change source ]

• Green E.P. & Short F.T. (eds) 2003. World atlas of seagrasses . University of California Press, Berkeley, CA. ISBN 0-520-24047-2
• Hemminga M.A. & Duarte C. 2000. Seagrass ecology . Cambridge University Press, Cambridge. ISBN   9780521052498
• Hogarth, Peter 2007. The biology of mangroves and seagrasses Oxford University Press. ISBN 9780198568711
• Larkum A.W.D; Orth R.J & Duarte C.M. (eds) 2006. Seagrasses: biology, ecology and conservation Springer. ISBN 1-4020-2942-X

References [ change | change source ]