A marine fungid

A big thank you for all the good wishes for our big day yesterday. The celebrations continued today with a lovely lunch with the two senior Talpids.

Not much time for photography today, so here is a quick photo of a coral.

I picked up this dead coral over 40 years ago on the Astrolabe reef in the Fijis. Measuring about 10 inches across it is the heavy, hard skeleton of a Fungia fungites, otherwise known as the mushroom coral.

Rather than forming colonies in the familiar manner of most other corals, adult Fungia corals are solitary and free-living, i.e. they are not attached to the substrate and can move about and can even right themselves when turned over by the waves. 

When a mushroom coral's thoughts turn to romance eggs and sperm are released into the water column where the fertilised eggs develop into free-swimming larvae. Within a fortnight, the larva settles onto the seabed and forms a vase-shaped polyp that gradually grow into a flattened disc, attached to the substrate via a stalk. The resemblance of the stalked polyps to mushrooms gives these corals their common name. Eventually the stalk of the 'mushroom' dissolves, and the coral begins its adult, mobile life.