Kelp
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By chapel bare,
with walls sea-beat,
the lichened urns in wilds are lost
about a carved memorial stone
that shows, decayed
and coral-mossed,
a form recumbent,
swords at feet,
trophies at head,
and kelp
for a winding-sheet.
—Herman Melville
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I can only compare these great aquatic forests of the southern hemisphere with the terrestrial ones in the intertropical regions. Yet if in any country a forest was destroyed, I do not believe nearly so many species of animals would perish as would here, from the destruction of the kelp. Amidst the leaves of this plant numerous species of fish live, which nowhere else could find food or shelter; with their destruction the many cormorants and other fishing birds, the otters, seals, and porpoises, would soon perish also...
—Charles Darwin
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In the lowest pools the Laminarias begin to appear, called variously the oarweeds, devil’s aprons, sea tangles, and kelps. The Laminarias belong to the brown algae, which flourish in the dimness of deep waters and polar seas. The horsetail kelp lives below the tidal zone with others of the group, but in deep pools also comes over the threshold, just above the line of the lowest tides… To look into such a pool is to behold a dark forest, its foliage like the leaves of palm trees, the heavy stalks of the kelps also curiously like the trunks of palms… One of these laminarian holdfasts is something like the roots of a forest tree, branching out, dividing, subdividing, in its very complexity a measure of the great seas that roar over this plant.
—Rachel Carson
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