Atlantic Beadlet Anemone
Actinia equina
Daisy Anemone
Cereus pedunculatus
About
The daisy anemone is a shy sea anemone that keeps most of its body hidden in a crevice or buried in mud, opening into a wide fringe of tentacles only when it feels safe.
How to tell it apart
Its colour varies too much to be useful for identification. Instead, look for its habit of keeping its base hidden in a crevice or under mud, showing only a dense fringe of short tentacles above the surface.
Appearance
Its base is wider than its trunk and sometimes has a frilled edge. The trunk, covered in small dots, can be cream, pink, brown, or violet, and may look like a short stalk or flare out like a trumpet. It can pull back into a squat, tentacle-fringed mound. A wide oral disc is ringed by hundreds of short, floppy tentacles that may be plain, banded, or speckled.
Habitat
It lives in shallow water, often in rock pools with its base wedged into a crevice. It may also be anchored to a buried stone in muddy gravel, with only its tentacles showing above the surface. It is common around the southern and western coasts of the British Isles, and is also found in the North Sea and Mediterranean.
Log it in Into the Blue
Describe what you saw and we name it, then keep every species you find in your Oceandex.
