DCHP-3

eel grass †

DCHP-1 (pre-1967)

Entry from the DCHP-1 (pre-1967)

This entry may contain outdated or offensive information, terms, and examples.

a marine plant with long slender leaves, Zostera marina, usually growing in large beds.

Quotations

1828
During winter eels live under the mud, within the bays and rivers, in places where a long marine grass (called eel grass) grows, the roots of which, penetrating several inches down through the mud, constitutes their food.
1934
For centuries the busy Atlantic had been tossing eel grass on the Nova Scotia shore. But little use was made of the lowly weed, although pioneer settlers were aware of the value of eel grass as an insulator, for they used it for banking their houses and stuffed it in the sheathing spaces of their walls.
1959
The water was dotted with thousands of geese, most of them with heads and necks submerged as they fed on the eel grass under the surface. . . .