Human Flower Project

Friday, May 18, 2007

Blooms that Sting and Swim

Greet the Flower Hat Jelly (but don’t pull it on your head).

Olindas formosa—Flower Hat Sea Jelly

Monterey Bay Aquarium, California

Photo: Fred Hsu, via wiki

For just about anything appealing, colorful, sweet or nearly-round, we humans call up the word “Flower”—to wit, this marvelous sea dweller, native to the waters off Brazil, Argentina and Southern Japan.

Meet Olindas formosa, nicknamed the flower hat jelly. It certainly fits several of the “floral” criteria above—radially symmetrical as a rose, opulent as a peony, and dazzlingly colorful as, well, honestly we’ve never seen anything with quite such variegated and flashy beauty in the plant world. (If you have, please let us know!)

Despite its name, the flower hat sea jelly is not recommended as millinery.  Its shimmering “petals” (tentacles) contain complicated cells that sting. The effect, we understand, is “nonlethal but painful.” Too bad! As its “pinstriped bell” grows to about six inches wide, this could make a really stunning cloche.

Flower Hat Jelly at the New York Aquarium, May 2, 2007

Photo:  Julie Larsen Maher

Wildlife Conservation society,  via AP

More along floral lines, we understand that sea jellies sometimes convene in huge numbers called “blooms.” Marine biologists are still fairly mystified by these events, though many suspect that they occur in overfished waters. “According to Claudia Mills of the University of Washington, the frequency of these blooms may be attributed to mankind’s impact on marine life. She says that the breeding jellyfish may merely be taking the place of already overfished creatures.”

If you would rather not try on a flower hat sea jelly but want to see a live one up close, check out the New York Aquarium’s ‘Aquatic Asia’ exhibit this weekend. The aquarium has at least one Olindas formosa in captivity, as does the Monterey Bay Aquarium in California.