---
title: Pizza Anemone (Cryptodendrum adhaesivum)
scientific_name: Cryptodendrum adhaesivum
common_name: Pizza Anemone
taxon: Sea anemones
published: 2026-08-08T15:47:14.114Z
updated: 2026-08-08T18:46:14.980Z
tags: Pizza Anemone, Cryptodendrum adhaesivum, Sea anemones, Red Sea, Marine Life, Diving
url: https://redseacreatures.com/taxon/invertebrate/stinging/sea-anemones/pizza-anemone
---

# Pizza Anemone (*Cryptodendrum adhaesivum*)

## Quick facts

- **Group:** Sea anemones (*Actiniaria*)
- **Size:** up to 30 cm across
- **Depth:** 1-20 m
- **Diet:** Carnivore
- **Activity:** Diurnal
- **Rarity:** Uncommon
- **Habitat:** Sand and rubble at the base of coral heads
- **Reproduction:** Broadcast spawner, Gonochoric
- **Hazard:** Venomous

## How to recognise it

- two kinds of tentacle - short branched ones in the centre, longer at the edge
- surface looks like tight pile carpet or moss
- colours often in two contrasting zones, pink, green or yellow
- disc up to 30 cm across

An anemone with two different tentacle types on one disc: short, branched, densely packed ones over the centre, and longer simple ones around the rim, so the surface reads as tight pile carpet with a fringe. Colour is frequently zoned - a pink centre in a green surround, or yellow against grey - and the disc reaches about 30 cm (12 in).

The English name comes from the look of that zoned, densely covered disc, but the surface is the thing to remember: the tentacles are unusually sticky, adhering firmly to anything that brushes them, and this is one of the few reef anemones capable of a sting a diver will remember. Only one clownfish, Clark's anemonefish, is known to settle in it at all, and on these reefs it more often sits unoccupied at the base of a coral head, half-buried in sand. Approach it as a photograph and nothing else: the grip is strong enough that pulling free tears both the tentacles and, sometimes, skin.

## Also known as

- **English:** pizza anemone, adhesive sea anemone, Adhesive Anemone
- **French:** Anémone adhésive
- **German:** Pizza-Anemone, Noppenrand-Anemone, Noppenrand-Meerblume
- **Portuguese:** Anêmona-carpete-adesiva
- **Russian:** Липкая актиния

## Scientific synonyms

- *Cryptodendron adhaesivium*
- *Cryptodendron adhaesivum*
- *Cryptodendrum adhesivum*
- *Stoichactis digitata* Doumenc, 1973

## Range

Andaman Sea, Australia, Indian Ocean, Indonesia, Japan, Papua New Guinea, Singapore, South Pacific Ocean, Vietnam

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*Source: [Red Sea Creatures](https://redseacreatures.com/taxon/invertebrate/stinging/sea-anemones/pizza-anemone)*
*Updated: August 8, 2026*