CHAPTEE XVI 

 THE FLOWERING PLANTS OF THE SEA-SIDE 



A CONSIDERABLE number of our flowering plants exhibit a decided 

 partiality for the neighbourhood of the sea, and many are to be 

 found only on the sea cliffs or in salt marshes not far from the 

 shore. The principal of these will be now briefly described, dealing 

 first with the monocotyledons, and then with the more highly 

 organised dicotyledons. 



The chief distinguishing features of these two groups have 

 already been referred to, but it will be advisable here to give them 

 in somewhat fuller detail. 



The monocotyledonous plants, then, are those in which the 

 stem is more or less woody and cylindrical, without either true 

 bark or pith ; and the woody 

 tissue is not arranged in con- 

 centric rings, but in isolated 

 bundles, which first bend in- 

 wards, as they rise, towards the 

 centre of the stem, and then 

 curve outwards towards the 

 surface, which is hardened by 

 the formation of a layer of hard 

 woody matter. As a rule the 

 stem is unbranched, and its 

 growth takes place by a single 

 bud at the summit. In nearly 

 all of them the leaves are long 

 and narrow, with veins running parallel throughout their length ; 

 and the parts of the flower are arranged in whorls of three 

 or six. The outer whorl of the flower is often a conspicuous 

 white or coloured perianth (that portion of the flower which lies 

 outside the anthers), but in some the perianth is absent, the flower 



FIG. 275. TEANSVEBSE SECTION OP 

 THE STEM OF A MONOCOTYLEDON 



