#echinus

ECHINUS

Functional Sculpture

Available at the @STUDIOTWENTYSEVEN Gallery

Sea urchin tests !

North West Scotland, March 2026

The "common" sea urchin is on the IUCN near-threatened list so don't go bothering live ones! These empty ones were found washed into the shores of a sea loch, apparently by the hundreds due to some recent strong easterlies 😲

I was going to call them "skeletons" but the proper name for this structure is a "test." It's veeery brittle so needs handling gently, and a lot of them were found at various levels of smashedness...

In our specimens, which I do presume to be "common sea urchin" also named "edible sea urchin" (Echinus esculentus), a lot of them exhibit some beautiful violet patterning lines, though most are simply green, presumably due to algae activity... wikipedia notes that even if this species is explicitly given the denomination "edible", it's other species, with orange instead of white gonads (reproductive organs) that are preferred, and eaten 🫢

ECHINUS

Functional Sculpture

Available at the @STUDIOTWENTYSEVEN Gallery

Origen: Coahuila, México y Texas, Estados Unidos. Cultivo: En cultivo es muy susceptible al exceso de humedad, necesita mucha luz o sol. Resistencia al frío: -15°C. Cultivado de semilla: Catálogo de Mesa Garden, 96.8 Coryphantha echinus GL71 Sra Madera, TX, dense spines hide stem Fecha de siembra: Septiembre, 2018. Número: 0453 Coryphantha echinus, 5 de Octubre de 2020