Going to post some of my favourite cool houseplants here weekly as the weather has gotten properly miserable and dark around these parts so taking pictures of my plants is a great pick me up.

This here isn’t exactly a plant, but an algae.

This is Aegagropila linnaei, known as Marimo (moss ball, lake ball). In Finnish the name is ahdinpallero or palleroahdinparta, literal meanings: water gods ball and ball of water gods beard.

These guys grow in the Baltic sea for example, in depths of up to 8 meters. It’s a green algae that grows into sizable balls of densely packed algal filaments that radiate from the center. The balls do not have a kernel of any sort.

Here’s the ball after I gave it a bit of a rinse and changed its water, the surface is full of little air bubbles right now.

These keep their round shape in nature when the winds move the water and they toss and turn so different sides get exposed to light for photosynthesis. At home they need to be swirled around to maintain the shape. This guy here has gotten a little one sided because I haven’t changed its water that often.