112 KEARNEY: PLANT LIFE ON SALINE SOILS 



« 



AGRICULTURAL IMPORTANCE OF SALINE SOILS 



Saline soils are of small agricultural value until the excess 

 salt has been removed by drainage and by flooding with fresh 

 water. Extensive and successful reclamation work along these 

 lines has been accomplished in India and in Egypt. Ganong* 

 has described the methods by which the salt marshes at the 

 head of the Bay of Fundy have been converted into hay meadows 

 worth from $100 to $200 per acre. 



Different crop plants differ in their adaptability to saline soils 

 and a few of them are so resistant to concentrated solutions that 

 they may be regarded as partial halophytes. First and foremost 

 is the sugar beet, the supposed ancestor of which is a plant of the 

 sea strand in Europe and northern Africa. Asparagus is another 

 example, since the nearest related wild forms are said to inhabit 

 saline soils and the cultivated form finds itself quite at home 

 when it strays to the borders of salt marshes. Among fruit 

 trees the date palm and the pomegranate are notable for their 

 ability to thrive where the soil solution is highly concentrated. 



Frorn an agricultural point of view, however, the resistance 

 of the plant is of less importance than the quantity and quality 

 of the product for which it is grown. Cereals will make a 

 fairly vigorous growth in soils where grain production is prac- 

 tically inhibited. The value of the beet for sugar making is 

 much impaired, in saline soils, by the high ash content of the 

 roots. Date palms, in spite of their vegetative vigor under 

 such conditions, produce fruit of inferior value. Forage plants 

 that are grown for the sake of the leaves and stems are usually, 

 therefore, the most profitable crops for soils of relatively high 

 salinity. 



DISTRIBUTION OF THE VEGETATION 



The principal types of halophytic vegetation may be roughly 

 classified as : 



1. Marine formations, consisting of aquatic plants, chiefly 

 algae, which live in the ocean and in brackish water. 



* W. F. Ganong. The vegetation of the Bay of Fundi/ sail and diked marshes. 

 Bot. Gaz. 36: 161, 280, 349, 429. 1903. 



