Published online by Cambridge University Press: 11 May 2009
Several small anemones resembling Metridium dianthus were collected from the River Roach and sent to me in the summer of 1934. A careful examination proved them to be Diadumene cincta which was first recorded from Plymouth. T. A. Stephenson (1, 1925, p. 880) described both an orange and a fawn variety of this species, the former from the Breakwater and the latter from the Pier, Plymouth. The Roach anemone agrees with the Plymouth one in all its more important habits and its external and internal characters. It would appear that the specimens of D. cincta from the New England Creek, Essex, recorded by T. A. Stephenson (2, 1935) since this account was first written, may have been derived from this river.
The anemones were dredged in abundance from the River Roach attached to living and dead shells of Ostrea and Mytilus and to Alcyonidium and Halichondria. All (about thirty) which I have seen were small, the diameter of the base averaging 0.6 cm. and the disc 1.5 cm. They were orange, but some were pale while others were more deeply coloured. No fawn ones have as yet been found in this locality.
The scapus wall is thin, translucent with a bluish caste and with the mesenterial insertions showing through. The cinclides are evident as distinct dull purple-grey spots, each with a central depression clearly visible under a hand lens. The tentacles are the same colour but paler than the scapus. They are usually uniformly coloured but in some specimens there are two faint bluish lines running along their upper surface and, in one individual, there was a pair of short dashes at their bases instead of these lines.