Name: Che-chin

Indigenous: Galen, Sargasso seas.

Use: No modern uses.

Habit: The plant forms loosely linked mats on the sea’s surface, individual plants live for a few years. Rarely the plants form mats off the coast, though most vegetation trapped on the land does not survive desiccation between high tides. Marginal aquatic forms of Che-chin do exist, though they have lost their ocean going habits.

Favoured conditions: Che-chin  is one of the more common plants found in Gadarren’s floating vegetation, it is predominantly found in the temperate seas in the shallow water off the continents. Many of the larger mats of vegetation continuously re-circulate in the currents, though occasionally the mats come closer to shore, or even fragment and become stranded. Che-chin is a hardy marine species, though can not tolerate conditions any significant degree below freezing, it also benefits from unobstructed sunlight, not generally a problem unless it is growing within an already complex Sargasso.

Structure: The plant is simple in structure; leaves are arranged in a rosette around a single bud. This bud forms the bulbous float that supports the plant in the water, though the upper most growing tip of the plant is dense growing plant tissue immediately beneath this the tissue is expanded and pithy. This swollen bud/stem provides the buoyancy of the plant. The inner foamy pith plays little other part in the plants biology, the real living tissue is the skin surrounding the float, the leaves connect to this skin by simple axils, sometimes at these leaf axils smaller plants develop which is the principle route through vegetative propagation occurs. The plant grows to about 20cm across, tapering slightly to a conical shape. Viewed from above the leaves are delicately arranged in a single spiral, with both the angular spacing and the leaf size decreasing as the leaves approach the central growing tip at the top of the cone. From the spheroid bottom of the plant a number of major roots grow from the bottom a little like tap roots, elsewhere on the plants underside finer and mat-forming horizontal roots grow. Though both root types are important for the plant to exchange minerals and water with the sea, the vertical roots are specifically important because these long roots intersect the subsurface currents are in part responsible for defining how the plants move.

Foliage: Che-chin’s lineage is from a relatively separate group of plants in Gadarren’s ecology, the leaves are simple, they do not show any ribbing or complex vein structure. The leaves are almost uniformly thick, and lanceolate. The leaf junction with the body of the plant is simple, though as mentioned above this axil can develop new buds that expand into new plants. The leaves are green/bronze though the bronze colour can reflect a defence response to excess sunlight, or other stress (e.g. UV). Sometimes a reddish/bronze vertical stripe can be observed from the leaf tip to the leaf axil, though certain species exhibit this more frequently than others, the reason is not genetic, but rather a combination of epigenetic and environmental factors.

Flowering and fruits: Vegetative propagation in the most significant route for reproduction in most species, and this occurs as a simple budding process, where the new plantlets abscise off the parent. Rarely, and seasonally the plant does produce flowers. The sexual parts of the plant develop as a ring beneath the growing tip, and are simple in structure. The male gametes are formed in papules growing in the skin and are released either through contact (for example by striking with another plant), or through desiccation and splitting of the skin by a combination of aging and heat. The female gametes are also on the skins surface though supporting cells that excrete a droplet of dew over the ovum. Fertilization is usually through contact with a neighbouring plant, where the male pollen is trapped on the dew like beads on the opposing plant. The fertilised egg is briefly retained until it grows to form a spore, which is then shed from the plant; from this point the new embryo is independent of the parent, though marine fauna frequently consume the young seedlings. Sexual reproduction is more successful in established Sargassos as the other plants hide and nurture the developing plants. In terms of reproductive routes sexual reproduction is favoured when the plants are mat forming, where not only the mating partners are available, but also an increased chance of progeny survival. Sexual breeding is also an important way of exchanging genetic material in communities as well as developing favourable characteristics (genetic variety). Asexual reproduction by contrast is best suited for isolated plants, where it is energetically favourable and more successful, also by this route individual plants can give rise to mats where as seedlings are frequently lost to the open sea.

Cultivation: Che-chin has essentially remained a wild plant and has not been widely cultivated.