Club Hydroid
(Clava sp.)

Hydroids are colonial organisms related to corals and jellyfish (all are in Phylum Cnidaria.) They are often mistaken for plants because they grow in clumps on stationary objects such as rocks, pilings, and various seaweeds (rockweed and knotted wrack especially.) Each animal (zooid) has a stem-like part called a pedicel and a flower-like part called a hydranth. The hydranth is made up of tentacles and a mouth at the center. If you imagine a jellyfish upside down and stuck to a stalk, that's sort of what a hydroid is like. They can't sting however. Their colonies look like fuzzy mats because each individual animal is very tiny, but when examined up close and underwater where the fine tentacles are supported, the colony has a lacy appearance. The word Clava, the genus of the club hydroid, means "club". It gets this name because of the bunches of reproductive organs under the hydranth which give it a club-like appearance.