A corallimorph in green, blue or orange, covered in short knobbed tentacles, growing in mats on shallow rock. Neither a coral nor an anemone but related to both.
To about 7.5 cm across. A disc with no skeleton, covered in short evenly spaced knob-like tentacles, in purple, orange, green, blue or yellow, often with the mouth and tentacle tips in a contrasting colour. It fluoresces strongly under blue light.
The other Caribbean corallimorph has branched, clustered tentacles and a bare zone around the mouth.
Shallow inner reef, rocky areas and pools, singly or in small groups. It reproduces by splitting along the mouth, which is why it occurs in patches of identical animals.
It has stinging cells but the sting is weaker than in most corals. It is heavily collected for aquariums.
Ratings are per location: 1 means found on most dives that look for it, 5 means a handful of records. Where enough dives have been logged the figure is calculated from them; otherwise it is an editorial estimate, and says so. We publish habitat and destination, not the dive site.
