46 SEA-SIDE PLANTS. 



full of a yellow dye, which they impart readily.. 

 This plant never grows wild inland, though it does 

 not require a saline air or soil. 



A flower called the sea campion, or catchfly 

 (Silene maritima], is very frequent on the sea-shore 

 above the water-mark, and it grows too beside 

 some of those clear rivulets which run along the 

 Alpine hills of Wales, and other mountainous 

 parts of our island. It very much resembles that 

 common flower of our hedges and pastures, the 

 bladder campion, and has the same glaucous green 

 leaves, and bladder-like flower cup, beautifully 

 marked with a net- work of purple veins. Like 

 that, too, it has the white starry flower, but its 

 blossoms are generally larger. Some writers con- 

 sider it only a variety of this bladder campion, 

 altered, in some of its features, by its place of 

 growth. This genus was named catchfly. from the 

 viscous substance which is found on the stems and 

 leaves of some of the species, but it is not on this. 

 It has a creeping root, and the stems are often 

 quite prostrate near their sandy bed. It has 

 generally but one flower, though sometimes a 

 little cluster of two or three may be found on the 

 summit of its stem. 



One of the most common of the little flowers 

 which grow on our muddy shores and salt marshes 

 is the sea milkwort, sometimes called the black 

 saltwort (Glaux maritima). It may be easily 

 described so as to be known when seen even by a 

 reader unacquainted with botany. It has stout 

 branched stems, often lying on the ground, and 

 about three or four, or sometimes even five inches 

 long. The leaves are of a glaucous green tint, 

 opposite to each other on the stalk, and are small 



