Conversations with Plants as ink🌱: Seaweed sargassum (brown macroalgae)
I spend a lot of time by the seaside, walking along the beach and see so much seaweed washed up ! To explore a different ecosystem, I decided to make botanical seaweed ink using seawater as the vehicle.
My variety of seaweed was mainly brown kelp (Phaeophyta) with air filled bladders. Usually when heating plant material in my kitchen, I am suffused with a pleasant woodland type fragrance but the seaweed fragrance was quite offensive! Needless to say I was banished to outside !! Hydrogen Sulphide was possibly the reason due to potentially rotting seaweed that may had been washed up for some time and was starting to turn.
Seaweed is fascinating… just imagine a forest of seaweed ribbons growing and wafting in our oceans, and like trees, seaweed sequesters carbon. There is much excitement about creating fields of seaweed in our oceans that have the potential to lock in carbon and help with climate change.
My seaweed botanical circles revealed small cell like features that are yet to be identified.
