Ricordea florida come from Florida (the Atlantic Ocean) obviously, and collecting in Florida is basically banned (you can't collect anything attached to rock).
Ricordea florida is very colorful, rare, and thusly quite expensive.
Ricordea sp. from the pacific are much more common, less expensive and usually less colorful. However, it's very difficult to differentiate between species of corallimorphs and some "
Ricordea sp." are commonly misidentified as "
Ricordea sp." when, in fact, they may be
Discosoma sp.
Case in point (Eric Borneman refuses to positively identify most corals based on pictures but "guesses" that the specimen in the following picture is
Discosoma sp. and not
Ricordea sp. ):
Bottom line: Without dissection it's almost impossible to make a positive identification.