FLOWERING PLANTS OF THE SEA-SIDE 407 



with reddish stripes as in A. BabingtonH. The flowers, too, are 

 in sessile axillary clusters only. This plant reaches a height of 

 from one to two feet, and flowers in the late summer. 



The Prickly Salt Wort (Salsola kali) is a very common sea-side 

 plant on some of our coasts, and may be recognised at a glance 

 by its general form and habit. The stem is very much branched 

 and prostrate, forming a very bushy plant about a foot in height. 

 It is also very brittle and succulent, furrowed and bristly, and of 

 a bluish-green colour. The leaves are fleshy, awl-shaped, nearly 

 cylindrical, with a spiny point, and little prickles at the base. The 

 flowers are axillary and solitary. This plant and its exotic allies 

 are very rich in alkaline salts, particularly carbonate of soda, and 

 were formerly the principal source from which this compound was 

 obtained. 



Our last example of the sea-side chenopods is the Glass Wort 

 (Salicornia), which thrives in salt marshes. In this genus the 

 stem is jointed and the flowers bisexual. The Jointed Glass Wort 

 (S. herbacea) is common in most salt marshes, where its erect, 

 herbaceous, leafless stem may be seen growing to a height of a foot 

 or more. The joints are thickened upwards, and shrink to such 

 an extent when dry that the upper part of 

 each segment of the stem forms a mem- 

 branous socket into which fits the base 

 of the next segment above. The flowers 

 are arranged in dense tapering spikes, also 

 jointed, with a cluster of three flowers on 

 the two opposite sides of the base of each 

 segment. Each flower is composed of a 

 perianth, closed with the exception of a 

 small aperture through which the stigma 

 and, later, the stamens protrude. The 

 Creeping Glass Wort (S. radicans) has a 

 woody procumbent stem, with the joints 

 only slightly thickened, and the spikes 

 do not taper so much as in S. herbacea. 

 Both these plants yield considerable 

 quantities of soda, and they are named 

 ' Glass Wort ' because they formerly con- 

 stituted one of the sources from which soda was obtained for the 

 manufacture of glass. 



We now come to those flowers in which both calyx and corolla 



FIG. 295. THE CHEEPING 

 GLASS WOBT 



