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Leaf Barnacle

Pollicipes polymerus

Leaf Barnacles are common to the Monterey area, reproducing in the summer in the various tide pools and on rocks. They are hermaphroditic, meaning they have both kinds of sex cells. After all the eggs a leaf barnacle produces are fertilized (sometimes by other leaf barnacles), the eggs turn into larvae. This is called brooding. A leaf barnacle can brood up to seven times a year, with each brood containing up to 240,000 larvae! Leaf barnacles mature in about five years, and can live to be 20 years old.

The leaf barnacle's body is covered with scales and spikes, not the kind of stuff you'd want to brush up against while surfing. They eat when currents wash over their cirral net. They usually eat small plankton and other things but can eat crustaceans up to 1 cm long. Although many barnacles attach to ships in great numbers, leaf barnacles generally do not. But some of them have been found on whales.

Leaf barnacles used to be called "goose barnacles" because in the 16th century, people claimed these barnacles turned into geese! To this day, some people still insist on calling them goose barnacles.

Last modified: June 10, 1997 by Marti
Comments, complaints, compliments -- marti@cse.ucsc.edu