CHAPTER III 



VEGETATION IN THE DUNES 



" No daintie floure or herbe that growes on grownd, 

 No arborett with painted blossoms drest 

 And smelling sweete, but there it might be found 

 To bud out faire, and throwe her sweete smels al around.'* 



— Spenser. 



BY far the most characteristic plant of 

 the dunes, one that is of great economic 

 importance in that it restrains by its 

 binding network of roots the movement of 

 the sands, is the cosmopolitan beach grass— 

 the maram-grass of East Anglia— a plant 

 which by its scientific name reiterates both 

 in Greek and in Latin that it is a sandy sand 

 lover. Everywhere it extends its long, creep- 

 ing rootstocks, sending up at the ends its 

 spiny-tipped leaf -blades, sharp and hard as a 

 needle, where they emerge from the sand. 

 Tangles of withered stems and rootstocks 

 hang in festoons from the steep retreating 

 sides of the dunes, but on the leeward side 

 the grass struggles bravely above the engulf- 



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