CHAPTER XII 



SUFFOLK SAND-DUNES 



VAST stretches of shingle constitute, as we have 

 seen, the main feature of the Suffolk shore, but 

 in places the shingle gives way to sand-dunes, which are 

 often the only barrier between the marshes and the sea. 

 Between Thorpe and Sizewell Gap, associated, as Fitz- 

 Gerald tells us, with tales of smuggling and heroism in 

 the brave days of old, and onwards past Sluice to the 

 crumbling cliffs of Dunwich, and again at Covehithe 

 and Benacre, lines of low sandhills fringed with hoary 

 marram-grass, and bright here and there with the 

 beautiful striped flowers of the sea-convolvulus, pro- 

 tect the lowlands from the tide. 



Among the characteristic plants of the Suffolk sand- 

 dunes the marram-grass and the creeping Carex aren- 

 aria, L., occupy, as under similar conditions elsewhere, 

 a conspicuous position. Indeed, if it were not for these 

 useful species, with their long subterranean rhizomes, 

 which bind the shifting sands together, the dunes would 

 never withstand the violence of the winds and waves. 

 Beneath the kindly shelter of the marram-grass other 

 and more interesting species contrive to maintain a 

 flourishing existence. As one wanders along the 

 Suffolk shore from Sluice to the little hamlet of Thorpe, 

 some two miles north of Aldeburgh, where the shelf of 

 shingle begins, a good idea of the flora of the sand-dunes 



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