Hello all,

I have gone to a lot of websites lately where people talk on the different types of algae and "brown algae" which are diatoms are not considered algae by the people who wrote the information down. I just wondered, why is this? To me and to a great many folks, diatoms are algae. They are unicellular, and they have silica in their cell walls, but they are still algae.

Diatom Info

Good question! I'd always read that diatoms are not algae although they are also called brown algae. The site you mentioned calls them algae. Because they grow in low light, have silica in them, and aren't green like many plants, they just don't seem very plant-like. Most sources agree now that algae are plants although others don't. It's too confusing!