Freshwater Pearl

Creature · Very Rare

A pearl of nacre, the same mother-of-pearl that lines the shell, often irregular in shape; about one mussel in a thousand holds one. At Pont-Aven in the late 19th century a fisher opened eight or ten thousand mussels a year and left the valves on the bank; the best known found sixteen pearls in 1897. The saying went that the pearls are ripe when the broom flowers and the oats ripen.