Kelp

"Kelp is the first plant to utilise a new kind of visual feature: Animation. Before, the only things that [were] animated were either particles or the lava/water and some other solid blocks. But we never animated a plant that used transparency. This was a new challenge for the style of Minecraft - as it has never been done before, we had no frame of reference to adapt the animation style to - so we had to find it."

- Jasper Boerstra

Kelp is a non-solid plant block that generates in all oceans. It has an item form that can be smelted to dried kelp, a food item which in turn can be crafted into dried kelp blocks, a furnace fuel and building block.

Obtaining
Kelp can be mined with any tool or without a tool. Breaking one part of a kelp stalk will destroy all kelp blocks above it. Each block has an undetermined chance to drop a kelp item.

Natural generation
Kelp naturally generates in any ocean biomes except warm ocean, near and around seagrass.

Farming
Kelp, when planted, will grow at an undetermined rate. The plant stops to grow at a randomly chosen height. It will only grow, however, if there is a water block above it. It can only grow to a maximum height of 26 blocks, including the mother plant on the ground. However, some kelp plants only reach a maximum height of 2.

Usage
Kelp can be placed underwater by hand, or anywhere by the use of commands such as. Placing it by hand will give it a random age value between 0 and 19. Kelp can only be placed in water source blocks, not flowing water.

Block state
minecraft:kelp