SALTWORT 201 



The plant is a salt-lover and requires a saline soil, and is also a 

 sand plant, and grows on sand soil, or a rock plant, growing on rocks. 



It is galled by Mecinus collaris, a beetle. A Thysanopterous 

 insect, Thrips subatra, is found on it, also two moths, Fumca ret ice/la, 

 Gc Ice Ilia instabilclla. 



Plantago, Pliny, may be from the Latin planta, sole of foot, from 

 the shape of the leaf, and the second Latin name indicates its 

 habitat. 



This maritime species is known by the names of Bucks-horn, 

 Buck's-horn Plantain, Gibbals, Sea Kemps. Sea Plantain. 



Lightfoot relates how he " went to Rummy Marshes, about two 

 miles from Cardiff, where we saw large crops of the Plantago maritima, 

 call'd here by the people Gibbals, which the hogs are very fond of. 

 They root up the roots as we saw, and grow fat upon them, as we 

 were assured. 



ESSENTIAL SPECIFIC CHARACTERS: 



263. Plantago niaritiina, L. Flowering stem a scape, leaves 

 radical, fleshy, linear, convex below, scape terete, flowers 3-4, sepals 

 not winged. 



Saltwort (Salsola Kali. L.) 



This is quite unrepresented as a maritime species in early deposits. 

 It is found in the North Temperate Zone in Europe, X. and S. Africa, 

 and X. and \Y. Asia, India, X. and S. America, Australia. In Great 

 Britain it does not grow in \Y. Sussex, S.E. Vorks, Renfrew, Mid 

 Ebudes, \V. Ross. \Y. Sunderland. the Orkneys, and the Shetlands. 

 It ranges from Caithness to the south coast, and is found in Ireland 

 and the Channel Islands. 



Saltwort is a maritime species, a typical salt-lover, on which account 

 indeed it is used commercially to obtain salt, and is found on all the 

 sandy coasts of Great Britain, growing in the same habitats as Sea 

 Blite. Samphire, and many other true salt-lovers, abounding in salt 

 and yielding alkali, whence the Latin, Arabic, and English names. 



Saltwort is a spreading or prostrate plant, with hairy, limp, or fleshy 

 stems. The leaves are awl-shaped, bluntly terminated with a sharp 

 point, spinous. hairy, sub -cylindrical. The stem is finely furrowed, 

 branched, wavy, angular, and rigid. 



The flowers are small, single, pink, inconspicuous, with the winged 

 appendages of the calyx spreading, scarious, or with a membranous 

 margin, rose-coloured. The bracts or leaflike organs are 3. spinous. 

 The segments of the perianth are as long as the appendages. The 



