The larva soon develops into a free-swimming planula. The planula swims around for about two weeks before settling down on a hard surface. It then becomes a mini-anemone. Sea anemones also reproduce asexually, which only involves one parent. In this case the offspring are clones or exact copies of the parents.
Asexual reproduction can occur in a variety of ways.
Some tropical anemones cast off their tentacles which deve lop into entire polyps. Others just split down the middle of their polyps. If the anemone splits down the middle, the mouth is divided in half also. This is called longitudinal fission. An even rarer process is transverse fission, in which the anemone spl its across the middle of the column.