Seasides and Strand Plants 



The cactus has next to no water and the saltwort 

 poisonous water, so that in both cases they modify 

 themselves and take in as little as possible. 



The author cannot say that the saltwort is able to 

 grow vigorously enough to be of much importance in 

 the way of collecting or straining out of the floods any 

 floating rubbish. Professor Flahault has very carefully 

 described the behaviour of an allied species (S. macro- 

 stachys). This is of a more branching habit, and grows 

 on the tide-swept beaches of the Camargue in the South 

 of France. Sand gathers round it as well as leaf-mould 

 and rubbish ; other mud plants manage to grow amongst 

 its branches, and so the settlement of one Salicornia 

 macrostachya may become a tuft 2 to 3 feet in diameter. 

 By the gradual coalescing of such tufts the area of in- 

 habited country gradually extends seawards. 5 



The author has never been able to trace anything of 

 this kind in Britain, but of course the level of such 

 sandbanks is always rising by the continual deposit of 

 silt and sand at high tide. 



The colonisation seems (in the Solway) to advance 

 outwards from the Armeria mudflats, and it is a grass, 

 Glyceria maritima, which seems the really important 

 plant. Its long trailing branches grow outwards lying on 

 the sand or mud, and root if they have the chance to do so. 



Thus it extends into and annexes the territory of the 

 saltwort, which occurs between and amongst the Gly- 

 ceria. At this stage the occupation is still very scanty 

 but then goes more rapidly onwards, for any silt or 

 floating material will be strained out of the water as 

 the tide oozes out. 



Very soon Armeria itself as well as Triglochin and 

 Plantago maritima, Aster Tripolium (in some places 

 also Spergularia marina and Glaux) begin to form the 

 typical Armeria flat. 



161 L 



