Plants that can swim!
Chlamydomonas
Chlamydomonas is a tiny plant that swims like an animal!
Sometimes, 16 of these tiny plants form a jellylike wheel and live in
it together.
If you peeked at a drop of pond water through a microscope, you’d be
surprised! You would see many odd little creatures zipping about in the
water.
One kind of creature looks like a green egg with two threads on one end.
It has a red spot that’s sort of an eye, for seeing light. And the
creature swims by wiggling the threads. Is it an animal?
No, it’s not an animal, even though it does move, as animals do. This
green creature makes its own food, using sunlight, just as grass, trees,
and other plants do. It’s a plant—one of the plants we call algae.
Sometimes, 16 of these creatures fasten themselves together to make a
sort of wheel. A kind of jellylike stuff holds them together. Each
creature’s two threads stick outside the wheel. When all the creatures
wiggle their threads, the wheel rolls through the water!
And sometimes 32 of the creatures fasten themselves together into a
ball. They keep their threads outside the ball and wiggle them to make
the ball move, just like a bunch of men rowing a boat!
Sometimes, 32 of these tiny plants form a jellylike ball and live in it
together.
