Lace corals  (Distichopora spp.)

Lace corals form ornate tree-like structures, with all the flattened, blunt-ended branches growing in one plane. These fan-like corals are remarkable for their bright colours (2), including violet, red, orange, and yellow, and grow up to 25 cm tall (3). The colour is deposited within the limestone skeleton and remains even after the animal tissue is gone, unlike reef-building corals which have white skeletons and the only colour is found in the living tissue (4)