Word: marimo
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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...tenderhearted Japanese public was properly indignant. Tokyo's Mainichi Shimbun last week carried a tearjerking headline: MAMMA AND BABY MARIMO FOUND. The pair had been abandoned in a milk bottle on a train from Hokkaido. The Japanese love marimos, as pets and as national treasures, and they hate anybody heartless enough to abuse them...
...marimo is a plant, a kind of alga (Aegagropila sauteri), found in three small patches of water in Lake Akan on the northern island of Hokkaido. Their name means "ball of fur," and fair-sized specimens look like green, fuzzy tennis balls. What makes them so dearly beloved is their quaint behavior...
Gamboling Algae. As marimos lie on the bottom of Lake Akan (or of an aquarium in a Japanese gentleman's home), they exhale oxygen which collects as small bubbles entangled in their fur. When enough gas has accumulated, the marimo rises to the surface. It breaks the water with a gentle plop and rolls around languidly until most of the gas has escaped. Then it sinks to the bottom to collect more bubbles. This sportiveness, not common in algae, makes it an entertaining...
...Marimos were discovered in Lake Akan in 1897, and Japanese biologists, including Emperor Hirohito, have studied them lovingly in every possible way. But no one has figured out why they thrive in so few places, or how they reproduce. One theory is that water currents of just the right kind are needed to bounce the marimos along the bottom and detach bits of fuzzy green stuff to grow into young marimos. No marimo lover, however skilled, has duplicated this process...