Family: Briareidae

Common Name(s): Climbing knobby sea mat

Colony Form: Encrusting, usually with irregular swellings or meatball-like lobes. Polyps >1 cm, with long tentacles, appearing as dense fur or hair when extended, making colony appear much thicker than when polyps are retracted.

Axis: None

Branches: None

Apertures: Pinhole-sized, each often on a low swelling.

Mucus: Absent, but with slippery surface.

Color: Purple, purplish gray, or with some tan; polyps brown, grayish- or greenish brown.

Sclerites: Large tuberculate spindles or 3-rayed sclerites.

Habitat: Typically encrusting on other octocorals in most shallow reef environments.

Distribution: Bahamas, South Florida, and Caribbean Sea.

Notes: Briareum asbestinum forms one to several upright, unbranched rods connected by a common basal mat. Erythropodium caribaeorum is beige or tan, with smaller polyps, and encrusts on hard substrates.

References: Bayer (1961), Cairns (1977), Sanchez & Wirshing (2005).

Similar Species: Briareum asbestinum; Erythropodium caribaeorum