THE WEEDS OF BED MO OR. 231 



the soft bed of the dried pool Oxford clay well kneaded 

 with salt water the two weeds look quite indistinguish- 

 able from one another ; for both share the common 

 succulence of seaside plants, familiar to most of us in 

 samphire and saltwort, and both have turned to the 

 very selfsame shade of red under the influence of their 

 identical conditions. When you pull them and examine 

 them closely, however, you see that there are marked 

 differences in their flowers and their mode of growth. 

 Both belong by origin to the goosefoot tribe ; but glass* 

 wort is far more degenerate in character than its very 

 similar neighbour. 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 

 further on the path of degradation ; it has lost its leaves 

 altogether, while its flowers have sunk almost indistin- 

 guishably 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 blossoms, at each joint of 

 the articulated branches. Alone among English weeds, 

 it approaches somewhat in quaintness and oddity of 

 arrangement the great leafless cactuses and euphorbias 

 of tropical deserts. 



The other plants that cover the sides of the moor 

 are almost as interesting in their own way as the crim- 

 son creeping weeds that spread over the mudbank. 

 The edge of the watercourses is fringed with feathery 

 spear-grass, its cotton-tufted seeds just protruding from 

 the purple scales that hide them. A few late asters 



