82 SEA-SIDE PLANTS. 



drooping brownish flowers, and in the other erect 

 blossoms, and both varieties may often be found 

 growing together. Like other species of the 

 wormwood, it was formerly much used in medicine, 

 and a superstitious veneration attached to it. One 

 kind of wormwood, the Common Mugwort (Arte- 

 misia vulgaris) of our wayside and waste places, 

 was so much valued by the older botanists, that 

 Pliny told of it that any one who carried it could be 

 hurt by no poisons, nor by any wild beast, neither 

 yet by the sun itself. The sea-wormwood has 

 downy leaves, and it flowers in September. 



A plant with a brighter, gayer flower, adorns 

 the salt marshes on the south and west shores of 

 England and Wales. This is the Golden Samphire, 

 or, as it is sometimes called, Samphire-leaved Flea- 

 bane (Limbarda crithmoides). It is about one foot 

 high, and bears single flowers on its branches of a 

 bright yellow colour. In some parts of France it is 

 called Limbarde ; and there, as with us, its fleshy 

 leaves and stems are taken to the markets to be 

 sold as samphire ; but it has none of the aromatic 

 virtues of the plant whose name it resembles. 



The Sea-side Feverfew (Pyrethrum maritimum) 

 is common on many parts of the sea-coast, but is 

 probably only a maritime variety of the common 

 May- weed, so abundant everywhere. It may be 

 distinguished from the sea-side camomile (An- 

 themis maritimd), to which it is very similar, by 

 the faint odour of the latter plant. This camo- 

 mile, too, has cream-coloured rather than white 

 rays. It is almost peculiar to the sea-coast at 

 Sunderland. The camomile tribe have their 

 name, Anthemis, from the Greek word " a flower," 



