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Creating sea flora?

@Purple-Cat flagThe Worldbuilder The Worldbuilder forum 2 comments schedule
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@Purple-Cat flagThe Worldbuilder
The Worldbuilder

I want to make some sea plants for my world but I don't know where to start. I have a list of a few kinds like kelp, sea weed, coral and red algae, but I don't know what else to do, there's not any good random sea plant generators out there as far as I know.

I want to keep it simple and make a list of things to take into consideration when making sea life, preferably a list of things that I can randomise to make things easier.

So if anyone has any knowledge of sea plant life or knows any good sites I can look at, I would appreciate the help.

@Kefi

Hey! Late response, sorry man.
I'm actually in a class that's covering a bunch of this stuff rn, so. Procrastinating on this next exam is NOT going the way I expected so far XD

When making sea life, especially plants, know for sure if it's a plant or an animal. For example, there's a thinner line than you would think between jellyfish and coral in phylum Cnidaria. Sponges are another thing people keep mistaking for a plant. This is a teeny but important, because some sponges/corals are actually predatory (look up the sea harp sponge) and can do some cool stuff because of that. Also, almost ALL sponges/coral/seaweed are mutualistic with tiny animals in order to live. The general working structure is almost always they provide protection and a habitat for the animal, and in return they get nutrients. (Most common example: a lil unicellular animal named Zooxanthellae is the only reason we can have coral reefs.)

As far as naming goes, we have our man Linnaeus to thank for Latin-izing everything. The system was like twenty times worse before that. If you want to go with general names in story instead of making a giant taxonomy system based on one of your ancient languages (which I srsly can't recommend. Bc who has the TIME), I would stick to stuff like appearence/where it lives/what it eats/what eats it for naming different things. Oh, and only green stuff is photosynthetic. So there's that too.

Hope that helped!!