COLIN CLOUT'S CALENDAR. 



goosefoot tribe ; but glasswort is far more degenerate 

 in character than its very similar neighbor. Sea-blite, 

 in fact, can still boast the possession of distinct leaves 

 and flowers, though the leaves are reduced to mere 

 shapeless fleshy branch-like masses, and the flowers are 

 scarcely more than small greenish pulpy knobs. But 

 glasswort has gone much farther on the path of degra- 

 dation ; it has lost its leaves altogether, while its flowers 

 have sunk almost indistinguishably into the general mass 

 of its stem. The whole plant looks, accordingly, like a 

 series of jointed pieces, with a little pyramidal cluster of 

 three sunken knobs, representing what were once blos- 

 soms, at each joint of the articulated branches. Alone 

 among English weeds, it approaches somewhat in quaint- 

 ness and oddity of arrangement the great leafless cactuses 

 and euphorbias of tropical deserts. 



The other plants that cover the sides of the moor are al- 

 most as interesting in their own way as the crimson creep- 

 ing weeds that spread over the mudbank. The edge of the 

 watercourses is fringed with feathery spear-grass, its cot- 

 ton-tufted seeds just protruding from the purple scales 

 that hide them. A few late asters linger on in blossom 

 among them, with lilac rays and yellow centres, like 

 Michaelmas daisies ; and thick fleshy leaves, often pic- 

 kled by country housewives as a poor substitute for that 

 almost forgotten relish, samphire. For the most part, 

 however, the asters are now fully in fruit : each head 

 covered by a fluffy mass of gossamer- winged seeds, that 

 fly away by hundreds with every breath of the misty sea- 

 breeze. No wonder they grow by hundreds on the flats 

 here ; seeing that each head produces a hundred seeds, 

 and each seed flies away lightly on its own account to 

 find a fitting resting-place by some similar pool or tidal 

 hollow. On the bank by the confining shingle beach the 



