Scientific name: Zostera marina L.
Common name: Eelgrass
Description
Habit: Marine plants with creeping underground stems and alternate grass-like leaves; with 2 vascular bundles in the cortex.
Leaves: Leaves on non-flowering shoots 20-50(-120)cm x (2-)5-12mm, dark green, apex rounded, shortly tipped; leaves on flowering stems usually narrower; sheaths closed, splitting irregularly when old.
Flowers: Monoecious, submerged, inconspicuous. Flowering stems up to 80(-150)cm, terminal, shoots freely branched; inflorescence about 10cm long; in a yellowish-green spike enclosed in the sheathing leaf-base, each consisting of a fused ovary formed from 2 carpels with a forked style or a single anther; stigma twice as long as style; connective of anthers sometimes with an appendage.
Fruits: Fruit 3-3.5mm (excluding style), ellipsoid; seed ribbed.
Habitat: Muddy, sandy shores, only uncovered at low spring tides.
Distribution: Locally frequent.
Native status: Native.
Of conservation interest: No