ARE PLANTS OF SEA BEACHES AND DUNES TRUE 
HALOPHYTES ?* 
THOMAS H. KEARNEY. 
Ir seems to be generally implied, and in some cases expressly 
stated, by writers on ecological plant geography that the sands 
of the seashore, even at some distance above high tide, are 
impregnated with sodium chlorid and other readily soluble salts 
in quantity sufficient to determine the character of the vegetation. 
Thus, Contejean? gives the reader the impression that his second 
zone of strand vegetation in southwestern France, that of the beach 
proper, flourishes in a saline soil. Warming? writes: ‘The vege- 
tation of the sand strand .... is a halophytic vegetation, 
because sand along the sea contains salt and the salty ground 
water comes close to the surface.” Schimper,* describing the 
‘Barringtonia formation” of trees and shrubs that occupies the 
higher beaches in tropical Asia and is separated from the high 
tide limit by a strip of bare sand devoid of vegetation, states: 
‘It is the salt content of the soil which [here], as in the man- 
grove [formation] has called forth the most varied means of 
protection against transpiration. To the same factor is perhaps 
to be ascribed the rarity of thick [stemmed] lianas, growths 
which only flourish when the conditions for water-absorption are 
most favorable.” Again, in his Pfanzengeographie (p. 688), he 
writes: ‘The cliffs | along the seashore] possess a less distinctly 
halophytic flora than the sandy and especially the marshy 
strand” —clearly implying his belief that the sand strand isa 
halophytic environment. 
On the other hand, Massart,5 who has investigated the vege- 
tation of the Belgian strand, quotes an analysis of dune sand, 
* Published by permission of the Secretary of Agriculture. 
2 Géographie Botanique 56, 60. 1881. 
3 Oekologische Pflanzengeographie 304. 1896. 
4 Indomalayische Strandflora 68, 73. 1891. 
5 Bull. Soc. Roy. Bot. Belg. 32':—. 1893. (Mém. p. 8). 
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