A vocabulary of landscape — a landscape of words
1133 entries
crinoid
A crinoid is a marine animal related to starfish and urchins that spends its life with its mouth pointing up, filtering food out of the current with a crown of feathery arms. Many are anchored to the bottom by a long segmented stalk, which is why they are called sea lilies. Others, the feather stars, drop the stalk as adults and crawl or swim. They have been on the sea floor for nearly 500 million years. I imagine living in a sea of nachos and just opening my mouth when I’m ready for another.
Etymology
The name is Greek for lily-like, given for the obvious reason, and it is one of a long series of marine animals that early naturalists filed as plants because they were rooted and branched. Fossil stalk segments are small perforated discs, and English country people called them Saint Cuthbert’s beads and threaded them into rosaries.
Notes
Whole beds of limestone in the American Midwest and in northern England are built almost entirely of crinoid stalk segments. In parts of India, the star-shaped segments of one fossil species are collected as Shaligram or as star stones and used in worship. Living crinoids are common in deep water and on tropical reefs, where feather stars come out at night and perch on high points to feed.