Pl. flustræ, -as. [a. mod. L. flustra.] The typical genus of polyzoa or bryozoa of the family Flustridæ; the sea-mat.
The name was first used by Linnæus (Fauna Suec., ed. 2, 1761), who says that he has substituted it for the older name Eschara, because the latter was ‘homonymous with the name of a disease’; but he does not give the etymology.
1825. Hamilton, Handbk. Terms, Flustra, the sea-mat.
1855. Kingsley, Glaucus (1878), 73. Here are Flustræ, or sea-mats.
1860. Maury, Phys. Geog. Sea, xiii. § 560. The leaf-like flustras and escharas adhere like mosses and lichens to the branches of the corals.
